


Caravanserai

by Nighthearts Scraps (Nightheart)



Category: Trigun
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightheart/pseuds/Nighthearts%20Scraps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meryl has an imperious and demanding mother who just happens to be the head of a noble family of a mysterios group of people called the renonciates (called so because they chose to renounce the ways of Lost Technology in favor of finding a new way to make it on that world), A mother who is running out of patience with her daughter for not supplying her with grandchildren. Her solution, either her daughter will be courted and won, or the term twenty-four hour surveillance would take on a whole new meaning. Oh, and did we mention that Knives was waking up in all of this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An early Trigun work if you look closely and squint you'll be able to see hints of The Gaea Device in it but mostly I started it on a whim. Unfinished and abandoned in favor of later works but still something of a fun read.

Vash blinked, then blinked again, not believing his eyes. And then for a third time blinked. it was still there alright. It was a ship, but not a ship in the wau most people thought of as a ship, not a remnant of technology lost to antiquity that had ferried thier ancestors from the cradle of Earth across the stars to be cast into this desert planet of sand and sun. It was a... ship, a sailing ship like from those old vids of sea-bandits and captains and damsels in enormous skirts. It had a smooth triangular-prowed hull with a keel-line, masts jutting up into the air supporting sails of a strange material. The onlt thing was that it was hovering ever so slightly above the surface of the sands.  
  
"Gosh Sempai!" Milly exclaimed in wonder. "look at that! i've never seen one of those before, what do you suppose it is."  
  
"inconvenience in a haughty package," meryl muttered darlkly, not looking the least bit pleased, or surprised to see it for that matter.  
  
The crew of young men, all dressed in matching loose trowsers with no shirts on, lowed a wide flat gangplank down the side. Walking two by two a large retinue of large muscled men with long rapiers on one side and pistols in holsters on the other wearing tunics of raw silk with elaborate knotwork on the edges and hems and long luxurious silk dueling capes with ribbons for cowls flirting in the wind walk grandly to the dusty floor. Each of them was wearing purple and white, like a uniform, each of them featured an elaborate spiral-knotwork tattoo on most of the visible surfaces of their skin.  
  
Following what were obviously guardsmen came a string of ten or eleven men, each dressed in many-layered and exceedingly elaborate silk robe-like costumes. Thier long white hair had been braided into many thin braids and set with strings of silver and crystal with jewels hanging pendulum-like from the end of them. The silks were of the finest weave, each dyes brilliant colors from peacock-greens to scarlets, to brilliant golds to sky blues, each costume carried a small fortune in gold and platinum embroidery and jewelry, some even wore elaborate masks or other accotrements. These wealthy and prestigious young men (odd that they had white hair and yet all looked so very young) lined up in front of the ship alongside the guardsmen.  
  
Then came what was pretty obviously what the entire show was about. At the top of the gangplank appeared a woman with white hair, she was obviously and older woman, but her face maintained an air of youthful beauty that belied her age. her face also carried a great deal of what anyone from old earth might have called "The manner born" someone who had been born to authority and privalage and breathed command, assumed that the fact that everyone would jump when she gave an order was the natural order of the universe. She was dressed in many layers of silk wrapped sari-like around her body, each layer was embrouidered to a faretheewell with silver thread in spiral knotwork patterns. The top of her garb wrapped several times around her waist then crossed over her breast and secured around her neck with a massive silver pinned brooch encrusted with amethyst jewelry. The skirt she wore on the bottom was many many layers of white and deep purple silk, light and transparent as cloudstuff, with more knotwork embrpoidery in silver thread. Each layer wrapped and folded to fall just so, and it must have taken a personal attendant hours to get it perfect but she moved in it with an unconscious grace and the air of a reighning queen. Then there was the jewelry, it was all silver wire of spiderweb fineness woven into intricate knoted spiral patterns with faceted, cabochon and oval amethyst jewels of peerless quality she wore then in a pectoral collar about her neck, on her upper arms on her wrists on her fingers at her waist and in anklets too. She could have bought several towns with the cost of her clothes alone minus the jewelry, and the jewelry probably would have bought her water-rights in a large town!  
  
The lady looked about her with the air of a reigning queen who had deigned to come an visit the simple peasantry within the countriside. She took in Vash who was currently half-burried under a pile of children, Milly who was watching the proceedings with wide-eyed interest, their modest little dwelling... and pursed her lips downward. Then her gaze fell upon Meryl and stuck there for a moment, her eyes widened in shock. She seemed to sway a little on her feet and snapped her fingers at a what was clearly a nearby servant and snapped out in strangely accented english  
  
"A chair! make it a clean one! I feel faint."  
  
A split second later a folding chair was brought out from the ship and laid out beside her and the lady was helped to it by solicitous attendants. Meryl raised a fine eyebrow at what she had clearly deemed theatrics as the young attendants fanned at the lady and called for iced wine and a sunshade. meryl sighed as this went on for several minutes.  
  
"oh Mother!" meryl snapped impatiently after another moment. "it's not that bad!"  
  
"Oh! that my daughter--" she said in distress. "The proud bearer of my liniage, of the Pisces Line! Should be reduced to such a state! Fan me again boy, I don't believe I've recovered sufficiently. And bring something stronger than wine! I think I'm going to need it."  
  
Meryl sighed again and shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose in her fingers.  
  
"Honestly!" she remarked to no-one.  
  
"That my daughter should be reduced to living in a hovel--"  
  
"It's not a hovel!" Meryl snapped indignantly.  
  
"--With only a single servant to attend to her!"  
  
"Milly isn't a servant!"  
  
"And only one idiot Guardian to protect her!"  
  
"he's not my Guardian!" she shrieked indignantly. Vash half wanted to argue the point.  
  
"And without any of the amenities of real civilization. And your hair! Oh great ancestors, your hair!"  
  
"I like it this way," meryl protested. Vash had never seen her so much on the defensive before, but then again the wealthy woman who was apparently Meryls mother seemed to have gotten the wrong idea somewhere.  
  
The Lady felt sufficiently well enough to rise form her chair and pace gracefully across the sands in her elaborate wrapped sarong and skirts.  
  
"I should never have listened to your father. I blame myself. That my daughter should be reduced to such abject poverty. With only a single man to protect her and lives in that... hovel provided by what is obviously a man not competent enough to keep her in the fashion she deserves..." The Lady began to fan herself frantically again.  
  
"He does not!" Meryl snapped. "First of all, Vash doesn't provide for me, I work!"  
  
Her mother gasped and fell back into her chair again in shock.  
  
"Oh... Oh... Oh..." her mother said, her fine sensibilities rendering her speechless with shock. "My poor daughter, forced to slave away--"  
  
"No-one's forcing me!" meryl said in exasperation. "I like working. I know it seems uncomprehensible to a pampered palace kitten but there are women in the world who want more from life than to be wrapped in fine silk and jewelry, live in fine palaces and bear children. I want more from life than that."  
  
"You're young yet," the older lady said dismissively. "It's just the wanderlust talking."  
  
"aurgh!" meryl made a noisless sound of exasperation. "You get like this everytime. I'm capable of deciding what I want out of life mother, thank you for your concern for my well being. Don't you have body-heir contracts to arrange or something?"  
  
"I do indeed," Queen-Mother said with a bright smile at her obviously peregrinating daughter. "Yours, in fact."  
  
"I am not, I repeat, not, going to engage any body-heir contracts!" Meryl said very firmly.  
  
Her mother looked at her daughter as if she were speaking in toungues.  
  
"What do you mean?" she asked, sounding shocked all over again. "It's your duty to your House. You've had your little fling, or whatever you care to call it, in the Outlands." She gestured vaguely and dismissively in the general direction of the house, Vash and Milly.  
  
"It time you had some babies for the good of the people. You're certainly of an age, well into it in fact. I've even taken the liberty of gathering you a lovely string of--"  
  
"Well ungather them!" meryl snapped. "Send them home, I certainly don't--"  
  
"Watch your tone young lady," her mother said in that tone that all mothers had. "And you haven't even looked them over, they come from the finest bloodlines."  
  
"A little too fine," Meryl muttered under her breath. Oblivious the lady went on  
  
"And not to mention the contract offers they bring with them..."  
  
One young man, dressed in the finest of silks in peacock-green fading to blue with gold stitching and jewelry of gold and emerald and blue topaz to match his clothes, stepped forward and clapped his hands twice. From out of the convoy of the ships several half-garbed "sailors" in his colors emerged a moment later bearing an enormous chest suspended between two poles between them, followed by another pair of servants with a smaller chest and yet another pair with a long flat casket. The first chest was opened by a servant with a flourish while Meryl waited, arms crossed impatiently and foot a'tapping. The insides of the chest were revealed to be stacks and stacks of gold disks, a smaller compartment was moved aside to revel jewelry of gold. The second chest was opened to reveal velvet-lined trays gems of finest quality carved into faceted shapes and cabochons. The third chest contained bolt after bolt of fine silks. Vash's eyes widened. Even on Gunsmoke, where most people valued water, not gold or jewels, the chests laid before them were worth not just a large fortune but several of them!  
  
The young man who seemed to be presenting the gifts to Meryl as some kind of bribe stepped jauntily before her and bowed over the hand that she (unwillingly) presented. He was a handsome fellow, tanned skin, silver eyes-- actually, oddly silver eyes, it looked like they were molten quicksilver instead of just regular grey-- tall, lithe with the build of a dancer and quick and coordinated of movement. His face had the pleasing features of a greek statue, symetrical, but a little too perfect, like he'd been created instead of born.  
  
He smiled brilliantly up at her, displaying even white teeth and a dashing grin. Meryl didn't seem to be entirely immune to the smile and attention of a handsome young man, for she colored ever so slightly. Vash felt a dark pang of something jab him roughtly in the area of his chest. He frowned.  
  
"You are even more beautiful than your fair mother told us you would be," he said, with another charming smile. "I am Benetar of the Fourth House of Capricorn... Please do me the honor of bearing me a son."  
  
The flattered smile Meryl had been entertaining up until that moment disappeared even as both Vash's and Milly's jaws nearly hit the sand.


	2. Chapter 2

Vash, Milly and Meryl were sitting around the kitchen table. Just outside of the city, in the backyard of the little place they had rented, a little city of tents had been errected in the shadow of the floating ships that they had arrived on. Servants bustled hither and yon, setting up all the comforts and amenities of a small civilization, bearing about down-stuffed palets and erecting bed frames, pavilions over folding tables for meals, braziers and portable burner for firepits to warm the chilly night air. One such brazier had a small animal carcass spinning slowly over it, there was another place that preparing all manner of delecacies on a portable grill-like stove. The pampered nobility watched the scurrying servants, occassionally calling out an order. Meryl ignored all of the fuss going on outside in the interests of explaining what was going on and who these people were that seemed intent on invading thier lives.

"They call themselves Renonciates," meryl began. "After the great fall and the time of chaos that ensued, their, and I suppose my, ancestors renounced the society of mainstram Gunsmoke. They felt that everyone relied too much on the ships and the plants that made the cores of the ships and not enough on plain old human ingenuity, so they split off and founded thier own colony, a long way out in the great wastes where they'd never have to come into contact with the people they'd quarreled with again."

"I've heard rumors about that," vash said. "But I've never met one before. How do they live without Plants to get them to survive?"

"They use something differnt," meryl said. "They're called 'Shapers' and they take... well, my father says they're called Psi-waves, it's a kind of energy-wave produced by the brain. Most people only produce a little of it, and some people produce a lot of it. I've heard it makes people telepathic but I don't know that for certain. Anyway they're able to manipulate the energy from a Psi-wave and use it to make things, like a Plant can do. I don't know for certain, but my father says they do it by rearranging molecules to make whatever it is they're after, I've seen Shapers bring water out of thin air or turn sand into stone. The people they drain these Psi-waves from produce big ones, and they're called Sources. So, Renunciate Society is built around the Shapers and the Sources. Sources crop up just about anywhere so there isn't as a great a focus on them, except the breeding program of having two Sources pair off to make stronger Sources in the next generation. The Shapers however are only allowed to *breed* with other Shapers, the women in particular. The men are all true Shapers, they have the Channels that enable them to manipulate energy, and they serve the people by creating enough water every Quarter to keep the farms running and enough power to keep the city together and the sheild up. I don't know whether it's that women can't or if it's that they simply aren't allowed to, but for whatever reason Shaper women in Renonciate society don't become Shapers themselves, instead, their job is to fill out body heir-contracts and have more Shapers. So that's it, Renonciate culture in a nut-shell. Basically."

"And your mother--?" Vash pressed gently.

"She's Shaper," meryl replied. "But she wound up having a child with an outsider by accident. I'm afraid it's not exactly a popular move on her part, first off Renonciate Shapers are exceedingly proud of thier bloodlines because that's what provides the people the means to defeat the desert without relying on power plants which could eventually break down. A proud people, the Renonciates.They don't like having thier precious genetic perfection outside of thier control."

"So they marry thier daughters to Shaper boys and get more Shapers," Vash surmised, it sounded like some medieval feudal society where women were married off and treated like chattel for the sake of heirs.

"Not exactly," Meryl said with a wince. "I should probably explain. Shaper boys are usually sterile with anyone that's not Shaper, I'm not sure how it works some quirk of genetics I assume. So, a system of quasi-polygamy has developed. Shaper men and women don't actually marry, a Shaper man will spend a large portion of his House wealth to entice a shaper woman of good bloodline to bear an heir for him, a Shaper boy to carry on the honor of his House by continuing to serve the community, or a Shaper girl to carry on his noble bloodline and bring in more wealth through body-heir contracts. It's an interesting balance of power in thier society; the men have the power to call down rain and beat back the desert, but... the women have the eggs."

Vash blinked. Milly just stared uncompredendingly at Meryls emotionless clinical presentation of facts, she could have been talking about the weather or her latest report to Bernardelli for all the emotion she showed.

"Let me see if I have this right," Vash said after a long pause. "Among your mother's people it is common for men to pay women vast amounts of money to have children for them."

"Correct, but it's just among the Shapers where bloodlines and fertility and genetic matches are prized highly as a way to keep the people in Shapers for the foreseeable future. After all, its because of Shaper abilities that they're able to survive out in the wastes at all."

"Okaaay," he said slowly. "I guess that makes sense. But you don't live with them."

"My father is normal, he's a scientist and he traveled out into the wastes before I was born interested in the rumors of a unique group of people that had found a way to live out there without relying on plant power. The desert nearly made short work of him, but my mother's father saved him. Mom apparently became quite taken with him while he stayed in her household and they... well, you can probably guess. A few months later i was born. Now things got interesting. In Shaper society when a woman makes a contract the heir is born for the man, but in a regular liason, the child is born for the woman, these halffies are not encouraged because they take away precious bearing time from the woman and they are usually born as a... dud I suppose you could say, one without Shaper abilities or a lesser chance of bearing Shapers in the future. My dad, however wasn't going to leave without me. He and my mom got into a terrible fight over who would get to keep me, each insisted that by the rules of thier society they each deserved custody of me. Finally the magistrate had to get involved, and he ruled that they would simply have to share me. So I spent eight months of the year with my father in his house in the outlands attending school and living a normal life and the other half of the rotation around the suns orbit in Sanctuary with my mother learning how to be a Shaper woman."

"I see. And You clearly chose your father's lifestyle over the one offered to you by your mothers people."

"I won't say its a bad lifestyle," she defended. "But... well... I like the freedom I have in the outlands and i like working to make my way in the world instead of having everything handed to me because of the supposed service I do for the people by bearing children. You see, Sources and Shapers are kept walled off in palaces away form regular society, a lot like in Ancient China where they had that Forbidden City. Shapers and Sources live in luxury in walled off palaces and come out four times a year to renew whatever it is they do that allows them to make more water and build walls and maintain the veil."

"What's the veil?"

"It's some kind of big," Meryl aproximated a dome-shape with her hands. "Over the entire city of Sanctuary. It keeps the sand out and does other things, but I don't really know what they are."

"Ah," Vash nodded, accepting her ignorance. Meryl clearly wasn't very curious about it.

"My father studied it for a while when he was there and he has entire books full of notes and theories about it, but he's never managed to make one," Meryl added.

"Huh," he said, dismissing that of no serious import and getting back to the matter at hand.

"So your mother brought you a bunch of shaper men..."

"Like I'm a prize brood-mare with a picket line of stallions," Meryl said sourly. "As a side note, the contract price they are offering me is about roughly half the usual for a woman of good Shaper Bloodlines. My mothers bloodline is the second most powerful out of all twelve noble houses, but well... I'm still only half Shaper. Personally, I think that thier preoccupation with creating pure bloodlines is going to be thier downfall one day. Without genetic diversity in thier stock they won't have any natural counters for genetic weaknesses that are bound to crop up. If you overspecialize, you breed in weakness." Meryl shrugged like it had nothing to do with her.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked curiously.

"About what?" Meryl replied cluelessly.

"About that miniature army of young men camped out on our front yard, trying to offer you money to have thier babies!" He said with exasperation.

"Nothing," she replied. "They can bribe me all they want, but I don't have to accept a contract from any of them. Certainly it would be rude of me to let them make such a journey and return to thier houses empty handed, but no-oine can force me to accept a contract. As long as I hear them all out and pretend to consider each suit, there can be no faulting me if I should choose to remain chaste."

"So basically, you plan to let them run through their rigamarole of contract offers, pretend to think about it, and then send them on thier way Sempai?" Milly questioned.

"That's right," meryl replied cheerfully. "As long as they've brought their own food and don't expect me to feed them, and thier own lodgings and don't expect me to house them, I see no problem with letting them stay, as long as they keep out of my way. I have enough mouths to feed without a small clan of uninvited guests to worry about as well."

"I don't like it," Vash muttered. "And what about--?" he indicated with his head the room that Knives was sleeping in.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Meryl said with an odd and strangely sharp little smile. "If he tries anything, we've got an entire plethora of Shapers that'll strip that psi-wave right off from him. That is what a Shaper does after all."

"You mean--?" Vash paused, considreing what she'd just said. Shapers somehow took the Psi-energy (which was, as it turned out, what made Plants so very efficient at providing power) and used it to reshape molecules to fit thier own needs. If Knives suddenly decided that he wanted to try to take over the town with his psychic abilities...

"So all we have to worry about is his physical attacks," Vash muttered to himself. "And I'm certainly a match for that while he's still injured."

He gave Meryl a sharp, peircing glance. The timing of this was certainly convenient... a little too convenient. Meryl affected a completely innoscent look, but there was just this aura, ever so faint, of smugness about her. She looked like a woman who had just won a major victory in a chess match and was very graciously not gloating over it.

So that's how it was. She was stringing these men along so she'd have the back-up she needed to combat what she most likely veiwed as a dangerous psychic predator.

Insurance girl, he thought with a small shake of his head. She's always got a back-up plan. He had to admit, part of him was very grateful to her for thinking ahead. He'd been wondering what he was going to do if Knives awoke in a mood and decided that since he couldn't move around it might be entertaining to him to use his powers to mess with people. Vash didn't have the skills to defend anyone against that, and now he didn't have to worry about it.

All he had to worry about was a large group of handsome young men, some of whomMeryl may or might not have grown up with, trying to take his short insurance girl to bed. And offering her entire town-water-rights ransoms worth of treasure for the privalage of doing so. Most women in thier right minds would have said it was a small thing to have a child in exchange for that kind of wealth. Vash very much wanted to ask her why she seemed to feel differently, but then all he had to do was think about what Meryl was like; independant, brave and contrary, and he had his answer.

That only left the question of what, exactly, would induce her into a state of desiring to have children.


	3. Chapter 3

By noon of the following day, Meryl was seriously beginning to question the wisdom of her particular little plan. That morning had seen her rising early, as usual, to start breakfast for her little household, only to find that her kitchen had been invaded. There was a small staff of servants making free use of her pots, pans, dishes, range and counter-tops to create breakfast delicacies such as she had not enjoyed since she'd left Sanctuary, the homeland of the Renonciates. There was fruit-stuffed buns, creme delecacies, pastries, sausage biscuits with gravy, plus fruit-fried pancakes, eggs and omlettes and other delicious foods in various stages of preparation. She'd been about to turn them out on thier ears (Meryl hated people making free with her precious kitchen) when she was sat at a silk-clothed table in front of fine porcelain dishes and served. Meryl hadn't been served a breakfast that she hadn't paid for first in a very long time.

Her ruffled feathers smoothed a bit at that, and she'd thought, maybe this isn't so bad. But when she'd gotten up to leave for her secondary clerking job at the post (she held down that job on alternating days, her insurance work, and the job as a waitress in the evenings) she'd found herself flanked on either side, before and behind mind you, by four burly guards in the uniform of soldiers of her House. She'd be having a word with her mother about the armed escort later on that evening. Not only were there guards, but one of the young men, Meryl couldn't recall which House he belonged to by his House colors alone (she'd forgotten what maroon and brown were, she thought it might be Fifth House Cancer) had taken it upon himself to keep her comany on the fifteen minute walk to the place where she worked. He'd offered to fetch a palanquin for her if she didn't feel like walking, she'd politlely declined. He'd offered her the use of his personal massuse if she felt in need of a back rub, or better, he would attend to it himself. Meryl had also politley declined the offer. Following that was an offer for the loan of his personal guard since her own personal guard and attendant seemed to be sleeping in that day, Meryl tried to explain again that Milly and Vash were not her servants. The poor young man seemed confused as to how they were part of her household and yet were not servants. Meryl had forgotten that in Shaper Renonciate society, co-habitation was not practiced. He then went on to ask that, if Vash was not her personal guardian then was he perhaps her concubine? (Women were allowed concubines the same as men, they just generally did not have children by them). it had been tempting to let him assume what he wanted... But she'd tried to explain the situation to him in terms he might understand.

Now her office was festooned with silk flower arrangements, boxes of jewelry and banners of silk, all unasked for from her "String" as her mother had so quaintly put it.

the things I put up with for that man she thought to herself. She'd never had any intention of having any more contact with that portion of her life than was absolutely neccessary, the occasional letter home, the card to her mother on her birthday and that would suffice. She'd certainly never had any intention of encouraging her mother in her mad plans to arrange some body heir contracts for her daughter before she was twenty-five, but then Vash had said that his brother was a dangerous telepath who wanted everyone dead... and Meryl had got to thinking about how Shapers used Psi to create thier little haven in among the sands. She knew that they used the energy of a Psi-wave from the Talented, other humans who were like Legato Bluesummers had been, telepaths, telekinetics, Empaths and that power replaced the power that would have normally been produced by a Plant to provide for their people. If Knives decided he didn't want to play nicely with everyone else, Meryl had a way to keep his powers in check standing by. if that meant putting up with importunings from a cotorie of eagre young men well...

:Admit it Meryl: she thought at herself, a little bemused. :You like the attention, just a little.:

Well, maybe just a little. It had been such a long time since anyone of note had, well, noticed her. Those drunkards at teh bar didn't count, first they ranked somewhere just barely above pond scum on the evolutionary totem pole, and secondly they'd grope anything in a skirt no matter what it looked like (as evidenced by how many men went home with Annie, who'd proudly nicknamed herself Coyote Ugly of a night). Vash certainly didn't seem to notice her in that way; granted, it was probably entirely her own fault, she hadn't done anything to encourage him... she wasn't really all that certain about how. And her formidable temper probably still scared him a little. But still, with as much as he went about flirting with other women right in front of her, he could at least flirt with her too!

And now she had an entire stiring of well-bred, wealthy, handsome young men lining up for her inspection!

:Okay, part of me is sort of...:

Part of her was collapsed inside, chortling with glee.

:I'm a horrible person: she thought grinning. She was fully intending to milk this! The mature, straight-laced , adult part of her was looking on and chucking its toungue at her in disapproval and she ignored it. She never ignored it, if the mature adult part of her thought it was a good idea to do something then she did it. But... well, meryl was a little fed up with being treated like Queen Elizabeth's Chair or something, just expected to always be there. it was nive to be considered reliable, but really, there was a limit!

And what of those hopeful young men? She did feel sort of bad for them, however, they knew what they were getting into. Meryl was guessing that most of this wasn't even about her, but it was about thier curiousity. Shapers were never let outside the walls of their Forbidden City, and certainly they were never let outside the confines of Sanctuary. They were probably starved with curiousity about the outside world, which was very very different fromt he world they were used to. So Meryl felt that they were probably getting something in exchange for thier time and the fact that she was going to send them all home, eventually, disappointed.

Her lunch break was taken, and instead of the usual sandwich and water on a nearby park bench that she usually had to get her through the rest of the day, Meryl was greeted with the sight of someone having set up a full silk pavillion to block out the rays of the sun, underneath which was a low oak table on top of a thick, plush carpet piled high with pillows and cushions. The table was spread with elegant white and gold flatware, crystal goblets edged in gold, and enormous floral centerpiece on a neat white table cloth. Nearby there were three servants lined up neatly alongside a portable buffet table, just waiting for her to take her seat so that they could serve her. Already seated under the awning was her mother and two of Meryls suitors.

meryl wasn't certain whether to laugh or scream. She settled for a sigh and allowed a servant to seat her on a large cushion and serve her from the sideboard.

"Meryl, these are Cilern of the Fourth House of Libra and Atrios of the Third House of Leo," her mother said with little preamble after meryl had been seated. Meryl greeted them politley and set into her meal. She listened to her mother rattle off the geneologies of each with half an ear. She already knew most of them anyway, much of her time during the half-year that her mother had spent in Sanctuary had been spent learning the complex interweavings of body-heir contracts and alliances among the Houses as they pertained to her own House. Meryl very much doubted that her mother would have collected a young man to body-heir contract with her daughter that came from an antipathetic house. It was also part of a woman of the Shapers duty to keep track of the family geneology, so Meryl had been forced to lean her family history, who had inter-contracted with whom, what children were produced, and who they had contracted with, as well as any "halfie" children brought about by intercourse with concubines and who they had contracted with.

:At least the food is good: she thought to herself. She hadn't eaten this well i quite some time. meryl didn't want to say that her little household was poor or anything, Milly and she were making enough between the two of them to get by, but there was no money for extras.

"i've been through your pantry my dear," her mother said after she was done with the pedigree of her two candidates. "No-wonder you are so tiny, there's barely any food in there!"

"There is too food in there!" Meryl snapped, offended. "It's just that it's almost the end of the week, and I buy groceries then. Unlike Sanctuary, here in the outlands there's no food let to go to waste. We're not practically drowning in water like you guys."

The outer ring of Sanctuary outside the first wall was one enormous farming patty. The Shapers refilled the water quarterly so that farmers could continue to plant on thier little plots. Sanctuary, for all of its size was wealthy in fertile growing lands thanks to the hard work of the Sources and the Shapers.

"Be that as it may," her mother replied with perfect equanmity. "You look like you're half starved. How are you ever supposed to bear children properly if you're skinny as a rail. And what did i tell you about mating with a tall man, any babies that your concubine gives you will split you wide open."

Meryl's eyes widened involuntarily.

"Mother!" she gasped. "I thought I told you that Vash is not my--"

"You said that he was not your guardsman," her mother pointed out. "He is sharing an abode, however small and mean, with you. What else am I to assume? Now, my dear, you must know that as your mother I understand perfectly well your desire to have a man that you can grow a sentimental attachment to, but my dear it is still your duty to your house and your people to bear children. How will our people survive without more Shapers born to every generation? it is neccessary that you have at least one child, for the sake of our people. It's your patriotic duty."

Annoying as it was, the honest part of meryl was forced to admit that, according to her mother's values she did have a point. In renonciate society the Shapers were the ones that kept the water plentiful, the farmlands fertile, the desert held at bay. They were the most important part of what allowed thier civilization to exist at all. keeping a plentiful supply of Shapers around wasn't just a minor concern, it was vital.

:It's exactly the same way people veiw the plants out here!: meryl realized. The epiphany shook her up a little. She'd seen how people got when thier precious plants were threatened, the entire city of May had gotten in on the act of trying to cash Vash in for his bounty so that they could repair thier plant once. three weeks without their plant being active and half of the city had been claimed by the desert. Those bulbs were considered vital to life and continued prosperity on Gunsmoke and anything that threatened that was met with swift retribution. She hadn;t considered that angle before. As a young child Meryl hadn't really considered how her people were responsible to the whole.

And now that she had thought of it, she couldn't just ignore it. This was the survival of a people that she was dealing with after all. Meryl came from a very stong line on her mother's side, and even though she was only a halffie, she still had all the right genes. Taking those genes away from thier genetic stock was probably seen as a threat to the whole.

:it's only one little baby...: she thought to herself. But that baby represented continuity to them, it represented the means to defeat this world for a while yet, it meant a way to continue thier way of life.

Meryl hadn't thought of that.

:But neither do i want to sleep with a man i barely know and don't love just to hand him a baby nine months later that I'm no allowed to raise!: meryl thought to herself. That was part of her beef with the entire program of "breeding" or body heir contracts. Meryl was strongly influenced by the ideals of her fathers people that said that she was a person and not just a scion of the House, that she had the right to have a say in how any product of her body was treated. In a body heir contract the contracted baby was immediately whisked away by the man's House to be fed by a wet nurse, the contract-mother never even got to look on the face of the child that she had spent nine months gestating in her womb and however-many hours going through the torturous process of laboring to bring into the world. It was only in concubine-births that the mother was allowed to keep the child for herself.

"That's neither here nor there," Meryl said at last. "I have a duty out here too, I can't just abandon my post. Besides, what would Vash and Milly do without me?"

Her mother frowned and pursed her lips but said nothing else.

Thankfully, her lunch break ended without Meryl having to reply to that, she couldn't help mulling over it on the way home. It was a discomforting revelation to make and Meryl wasn't exactly certain what she should do about it. She had no intention of having a child just to give it away and never getting to see it again. Contract mothers were trained from a young age not to think of thier contract-babies as thier own, as per the agreement they make when they take a contract that infant belongs to the man who made the contract's House. Meryl didn't think she could do that. If she were going to have children, she wanted to raise them in her own House, but halfies, while not considered true Shapers, were still expected to do thier duty by thier people.

Shapers were the only thing that enabled the Renonciates to live out there in the wastes so far away from any of the cities or the Plants or other Lost Technologies that the rest of human Gunsmoke depended on to survive. Theirs was a simple society, the farmers tended the crops on the outer rim, the denizens of the city lived out thier daily lives selling wares, weaving silk, working metal and tending to thier great city, and the Shapers and Sources lived sealed away on their great palace complexes supported by their people and in turn revitalizing the growth and prosperity of the lands and city of thier people four times a year. There were no mechanical transports, no lost technologies hanging around, everything in Renonciate society was handled by the sweat of a persons brow and the strength of thier laboring beasts. And up until she'd really really thought about it, Meryl had only ever looked at Renonciate Society and seen everything wrong with it; mainstream Gunsmoke had seemed to always be so much better to her, she had no responsibilities to her House out here in the Outlands and she could live her life exactly as she cared to.

Meryl sighed a little to herself. This was the life she had chosen for herself, and she was loathe to give it up. She liked being independent, she liked making her own way in the world without anyone telling her that she had to do this or be that. Still, wasn't that just a little selfish? Was she selfish to want to live her life the way she liked? Was she selfish to want to raise her own children? Meryl didn't think so, but according to the Renonciate way of thinking she was.

:I don't know what to think anymore: she thought, feeling a little dispirited. She brightened. :I know! I'll talk with Milly about it!: Other people might think that Milly was a few bricks shy of a house sometimes but Meryl knew very well that she could be surprisingly sharp about things, and there was no-one better for getting straight to the real point of things and helping her figure out what she might be missing.


	4. Chapter 4

Vash was having a hard time absorbing everything that was going on. Oh he'd heard of the Renonciates of course, they might have fallen into obscurity in the last two generations, so much that there wasn't a single mention of them in recent history books for school children, but back in the days they'd been quite infamous. Shortly after the crash there had been a group of what some might call religious zealots and others might simply say people who felt strongly about something. They'd believed that mankind had fallen from its true purpose and lost its way when they had all come to rely so heavily in the plants to keep them going. They were also highly suspicious of lost technology (lord only knew how they'd been induced into being put in cryo-sleep and onto a ship!). They had felt that people relied too heavily on machines and technology to do everything for them without first trying to do everything they could for themselves. They decided to renounce the prevailing ways of depending on plants and technology and to find thier own way in the world. They called themselves "The Renonciates" (actualy at first it might have been "Renounciates" but there had been a slight language shift over time).

Vash hadn't heard anything about them since they'd gathered together in a big caravan over a century ago with beasts and seedlings and farming implements and struck out for parts unknown way across the sand-sea out into the wastes where there were no other ships or signs of habitation. It appeared that thier experimental society had been a success, but Vash had never in his wildest imagined such an odd civilization as the one Meryl had described!

:Sources, and Shapers, huh?: he mused to himself. Such an odd way of getting around the need for a plant to provide everything. They used the power of the human Psi-wave, taken in great quantities from a large number of select people capable of creating one, to replace the power of a plant. Ingeneous! He wondered how the Shapers did it. Maybe he could get one of thier guests to give him a demonstration. Like he'd really like to see how they used Psi power to create water to grow grops with. Then another thing occured to him...

:They did it!: he realized, feeling a profound shock. Knives was always going on and on (at length, ad nauseum) about how humans relied so heavily on thier "Sisters" to survive and how they were nothing but parasites feeding on the strength and energy of their kin, but here was a group that managed to exist happily without the use of a single plant, if everything Meryl had said about them was true. If that was true then there was a way for humans and plants to co-exist without one depending on the other. He had to see this! Better still, he had to take Knives to see this.

His rising excitement was dampened a bit however when he looked out the window to see Meryl, escorted both before and behind by those massive uniformed guardsmen was immediately swarmed by young men before she could even make it to the front door. Vash had been studiously ignoring them for most of the day while they had ordered about servants to help them prepare themselves.

By all appearences they were like pampered princes. The better part of their morning was spent being bathed (in a portable tub filled to the brim with scented water no less) by thier servants, then having them give full-body massages with scented oils. None of the young men appeared to be the least bit self-conscious around one another, stripping down to nothing and even bathing together, they simply sat there sharing gossip and laughing and teasin one another as if they weren't in not a stitch but thier birthday suits. Once the massages were done with they had retired to thier tents respectively and come out a full two hours later fully clothed.

They wore differing costumes on the same theme, a sleeveless undertunic of raw silk, embroidered with elaborate geometric spiralling knotwork patterns along the neck and hem, then a large draping overtunic, some wore it tartan-stle in drapes across thier chests others wore it as a simple cape and some had it cut duster-style. The hem and seams were all heavily embroidered in silk and gold or silver thread with intricate spiraling tribal knotwork designs that twisted and wove in on themselves. Vash had noticed that they used those designs not just in their ordinary clothes, but also on the tents they'd brought with them and the outside of the ship they'd traveled in.

The silks they wore were of the finest weave, some of them even interwoven with fine spider-like silver and gold threads so that they gleamed slightly in the sunlight. Besides the intricate patterns that were so much a trademark of thier style, they also had apparently never met a color they didn't like; vivid azure, emerald green, deep red, saffron, gold, brilliant purple, indigo, sky blue, flame-orange... many wore silks dyed so that one color faded into another color faded into another color, some wore silks that were one color but so heavily embroidered with patterns in differnt colored silk threads that it was hard to see the original garment. They wore loose silk or cotton trousers (also heavily embroidered in more of those spiral tribal knotwork designs) that ended at the knees, but others wore them as full loose pants; those that wore them full length generally brought them in at the calf with gold lacings around them, and sandals with gold and jeweled straps.

More than the elaborate silk and embroidered robes they wore were the way they festooned themselves with jewelry. Wealth, in Renonciate society, was apparently displayed on the person. The men wore multiple necklaces with heavy gold chains and medallions and lots and lots of finely cut jewelry. They wore rings on every finger (often more than one) they wore belts of gold plagues strung together and fastened with jeweled buckles, torques on each wrist that had patterend jewelry embedded in them and on the upper arms as well, they wore elaborately designed gold-and-jeweled circlets on thier heads. They also did peircings, and not just on the ears either.

:Peacocks: was Vash's decided opinion after having witnessed how much time they spent in grooming themselves. They were like a gaggle of peacocks preparing themselves to be put in display. He witnessed the reason why the moment Meryl came into veiw. They were lolling about on the front lawn under thier pavillions with servants standing nearby to top off thier wine, each of them was lounging in a position best suited to display himself and all of his wealth. Once she was within range the nearest got to his feet and like a proud young stallion and strutted right over.

There was no outward sign of it, but due to Vash's long association with her he could read her cues like printed text, she was annoyed, but didn't see a way around putting up with it. She smiled her fake bright, beaming "Insurance Girl Smile" and greeted her visitor politely and with every evidence of delight. It was like the fake beaming smile she'd bestowed on him when he'd ordered food from her during the BDN debacle on the sand steamer and she and Milly had been working their passage off. There were no sparkles, but the smile was brilliantly false.

He tried to pretend that he wasn't watching out the window while Meryl was dragged off to the collection of pavillions and sat in the shade with one of her guests. A platter full of fruit and tiny delicacies was presented to her and a goblet full of wine was placed in her hand by a solicitous suitor. Meryl smiled politely and inquired as to whether the guest found the outlands to his liking. They apparently made small talk for a few minutes, and a servant appeared from out of no-where with a stringed lute-like instrument and the young man offered to play. Meryl nodded her head and reclined on the cushions to hear his song. He wasn't inspired, but he wasn't bad either, mediocre with a passable voice. His hostess, or maybe she was an honored guest in his pavillion, clapped politely when finished and complimented him on his form. Then she bowed out and visited to next pavillion. This young man apparently speciallized in some outlandish version of chess and Meryl played a game against him but lost early, claiming that it had been so long that she had forgotten most of the rules. The next pavillion offered her foods and refreshments and the young man in it played a pipe instrument that slit in half partway down and had two different airholes that could be closed off with the thumb keys and they made tw harmonizing sounds which could be changed using the fingers of the different hands. Vash had never seen or heard of such an instrument, it made a high sweet dual sound and it was like hearing two shepperds pipes played at once. After the fourth, who also offered her refreshments and entertained her for a brief while with small talk about this or that, Meryl had seemingly had enough of being the polite brood mare and begged off, saying that her household needed supervision.

When she at last got on the other side of the door inside their house she leaned against it, braced as if to physically keep them out and ran her hands through her hair. She let out a gusty sigh and said

"What was I thinking?"

"Rough day?" Vash inquired casually.

"Not so bad," she replied. "Not too busy, but the incoming sat-graphs kept me occupied for a while. Mother insisted on having lunch with me, along with two of those out there." Meryl nodded her head at the crowd camped just outside her door.

"Can't you just uninvite them?" Vash asked next.

"Don't be rude," Meryl replied. "They came a long way to visit."

"You don't have any intention of doing what they came here to visit for," Vash replied logically, reffering to the fact that every one of those strutting peacocks out there were strutting and peacock-ing about for the exact reason that peacocks strutted. To be precise they wanted thier chosen pea-hen to lay thier eggs, so to speak. Meryl had no intention of doing so, but wasn't going to tell them that so...

"You're the one being rude."

Meryl very much looked like she wanted to argue with him about that but was forced to concede his point. She had stated clearly that she had invited them there with her own purposes in mind, mainly she saw them as an emergency line of defense against possible attack by a very irrate Knives. They were, in effect, being strung along.

"Who says?" Meryl demanded suddenly, straightening her spine and crossing her arms over her chest. Vash recognized that pose, it was the one Meryl got when she was being defensive and contrary and was going to argue the point dogmatically even if she knew she was wrong.

"You said," Vash replied, fully ready to argue with her for some reason. He had been in a bad mood all day, for some reason he'd just been really irritated. Seeing those posers camped out in his space, strutting and preening, messing around with his...

With his what exactly? His insurance girl? That shouldn't make him so annoyed. His housemate? She was the one paying the rent, so conceivably she should be the one allowed to say who was and was not allowed to camp out on the front lawn of the residence she paid for. The cooker of his meals? That sounded pompous, it sounded like he considrered her as little more than someone who existed for his convenience to wait on him and keep his house and that definately wasn't true. Knives thought that way. So why then did the sight of all those other men vying for her time and attention bother him so much?

He should be happy for her, right? He knew that she hadn't had the opportunity for any sort of social life, aside of with Milly, since she'd been assigned to follow him around. If she had a long distance boyfriend Milly would certainly have mentioned it, so he should be happy for her that she was finally getting some time to develop relationships that didn't include her work. It wasn't healthy to work all the time. While it might not be what he'd had in mind, the interaction with other people would improve her social skills. That was good for her. A good friend should always want what was best for thier friend. Meryl was a pretty girl, it was natural that at twenty five she should start looking around for a person suitable to settle down with and have children. Vash already knew he wasn't a suitable match, (that whole "has a bounty on his head worth more than the annual income of most cities" thing was definately a show-stopper right there) and they probably, no, definately, couldn't have children together so he should be pleased that she was finding someone who could give her the kinds of things she deserved.

But he wasn't happy with this. He was not happy with this at all.

"So?" she said, her posture becoming more rigid, oddly her features seemed to take on the cast of someone who was the acknowledged queen of the world. Her chin firmed and raised a touch. "I may do as I please."

"Within reason," he replied, not certain exactly how he was supposed to frame his protest, or precisely what he was protesting in the first place.

"This isn't unreasonable," she replied, her tones calm and measured. It was like she thought it wasn't worth the energy to get angry about, and Meryl would get angry about just about anything. The term "hair trigger" and short fuse had to have been invented soley to describe her temper. Hearing her get into an argument using a "so-reasonable" tone of voice was unusual, no, rather it was almost unheard of. She might bicker a bit with Vash over the money for groceries, chide Milly about not picking her laundry up off the floor, or yell at him for accidentally blowing up the kitchen, but she was always very expressive with what displeased her.

:Is she...: Vash wondered taking in her posture and tone. :Is she, picking a fight with me?:

Her eyes and manner didn't have the usual spark to them that she got whenever she felt strongly enough about something to bicker or argue about something. She didn't really care one way or the other about this matter she was fully prepared to fight with him over, she really didn't!

:She is!: he realized in amazement. :She is picking a fight with me.:

Odd, Meryl was no pacifist, but she didn't generally go looking for a fight either. She didn't run away when one was planted on her doorstep, and she'd hold the line no matter what once she took up the banner, but "never start a fight but always finish it" seemed to be her motto in life. It was against her character to go picking fights with people, especially people she lived with. She had a temper, no doubt about that, but as long as you didn't do anything to really annoy her, she was usually content to leave you alone.

So that left the question of, why was she willing to argue with him over something she didn't really care about?

"How is it not unreasonable?" Vash demanded next. He wasn't sure what the fight was about precisely, but that didn't mean he couldn't find out.

"You just said that I can do anything I want within reason," she replied. "There's no reason for anyone to object to my cultural norms, this is part of where I come from after all. I am perfectly within my rights to decide to take a body-heir contract if I want one. It is not unreasonable."

There was a strange manner about her, like a cat waiting at a mousehole, seeing of her quarry was going to do something interesting.

"You said earlier that you didn't want one!" Vash said, now truly getting irritated with her. Meryl wasn't the sort to be wishy-washy about anything, she didn't vacilate back and forth on what she wanted. When she said yes, she meant yes and when she said no she meant it and would back it up with severe physical harm if it came to it. She almost never answered with a maybe unless the possible input of another person would be required. Unlike most women, Meryl never said one thing and meant the opposite, it was weird and out of character to see her act that way. If she didn't care about the thing she was arguing about, Meryl wouldn't bother.

"I don't want one," she said. "But that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have one."

Vash wasn't getting the difference. he made a frustrated noise and frowned at her.

"Whatever," she said lightly in response to his frustration. She shrugged and walked off. "I'm going to finish my paperwork and cook dinner."

vash was left wondering what the hell had just happened. There was only one sure way to find out...

"Milly...!" he called, looking for an explanation.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can haz lulz!

Those two. Milly shook her head to herself over thier strange, odd little not-argument. She'd caught most of it and didn't blame Vash for being confused. Her sempai had always struck Milly as being a very purposeful, driven kind of personality but often her interpersonal relationships had suffered neglect due to Meryl's tendency to keep her eyes locked on a goal. Unlike Milly, Meryl hardly ever wrote home, and when she did she never really seemed to know what to write.

"That child," Meryls mother, Kalaedra said into her tea. Yes, Milly had invited her to have tea on the back porch, mostly out of curiousity.

"She's still so uncertain," Kalaedra said, sounding a little rueful. Milly blinked in shock and looked at the woman with incredulity written across her face. Meryl? Uncertain? Milly nearly laughed at her. She'd never met a woman so detirmined to be decisive in all of her life.

"What's that about?" Vash asked, stepping out onto the porch and stretching out in a chair where the two women were having tea.

"My daughter was raised in two separate worlds," Kalaedra replied. "The world her father accepted as being the right way to do things, and the world that my people insist is the right way to do things. The two ways are very diferent. Her fathers people, that is, your kind, seem to value the acheivements of the individual above all things. A person is expected to be thier own person and carve thier own way in the world. They may rely on the power plants to get by, but it is an individuals work and education and leaning that detirmines hat they will do and become in life. Renonciate life is different, it is the community as a whole that is held sacred. Renonciates work for everyone else, Sources give of thier essence to enable Shapers to Shape the Aether and give the people the things they need to defeat the elements for another year; in return for that service farmers farm the land and makers create goods to support the ones who provide for them. Boy Shpaers are expected to become Shapers and serve the people, and girl Shapers are expected to fulfil body-heir contracts to ensure the next generation and the continuence of our way of life."

"Sempai seems to have chosen the freedom here in the Outlands over the comfortable life in your city," Milly pointed out. "i don't see any uncertainty in her, not a bit. Meryl always knows what to do."

"I suppose you would have to be her mother to really see it," Kalaedra said. "The truth is, that among the Renonciates there is something of a hierarchy; full-blood Shapers are at the top and given great respect. Sources are given equal respect for the service they give to thier community, but theirs seems to be based on how powerful they are. The Normals, that's people with no abilities for Shaping or acting as a Source, while they fill a variety of neccessary functions such as farming the land and taking care of the city, tend to be discounted out of hand. They run things, but they are not considered to be truly important is the attitude of most Shapers anyway."

"I think I see," Milly said. "So, because she was normal she wasn't acknowledged with your friends then?"

"Meryl isn't a Normal, otherwise these young men wouldn't be here. Meryl is what is called a "halffie" that is, a person who is born half-Shaper. Usually these halflings are the product of a mother Shaper and her concubine having a child, and the efficiency of their Shaping, that is, the ability for them to Channel a Source's essence or vital energy, is greatly reduced from that of a full blood contract child. They have a status, of a sort, but it does not command the same respect that a full-blood gets. To tell the truth, despite the services that some halffies do for the community, they are looked down on as being "lesser" by thier peers. There are limitations put on where they can go and who they can associate with. There are also certain social stratifications as well, there are pure-bloods that simply wouldn't be seen dead consorting with a halfling, that goes for children as well as adults."

"Oh," Milly said, starting to get the picture.

"I don't understand the attitude myself for halffies aren't useless. They might not be able to fill a farming patty with water, or raise walls and create whole sections of city like a conclave of true Shapers can, but they aren't useless either. It's just that they are often undervalued and discounted as much as the Normals are. They don't live in the Forbidden City like Shapers do, but go out into the wider city and get jobs like a Normal, a Master takes and apprentice and so on. But Meryl only stayed in the city for part of the year..."

"So she was an outsider among outsiders," Milly finished the thought for Kalaedra.

"Yes," her mother admitted. "She didn't seem to be a terribly social child to begin with, and her ways of thinking were always so strange. None of the other hildren knew how to interact with her. Having lived all of thier lived sheltered with thier parents in Forbidden City, the outer world was something of a myth to them. Even I didn't know what to make of her half the time. I blame her father, it's entirely his influence in insisting upon transplanting her for so much of the time away from the city that made it so that she constantly never belonged."

:Oh dear: thought Milly, seeing the annoyed frown on Kalaedra's face as she thought of Meryl's father. The youngest child of a unified household had never had to personally deal with a split one before, but she'd had plenty of friends with parents who had been unable to resolve thier differences and had gone thier separate ways, either fighting for custody of them or sharing them for half a year each. Add to what was already a tough adjustment for most children the difference between two very different cultures and there was bound to be an even greater level of difficulty.

"What was she like as a child?" Vash asked curiously.

"She was... solitary," her mother said at last. "I had my own work for the people and it took up a lot of my time, I'm a matchmaker so negotiating Body-Heir contracts on behalf of two different Houses takes a lot of work and diplomacy, as well as politics. Can't risk offending the houses after all, and possibly an inter-house feud which can last a while, so an intermediary neutral to either side is often used. My services are often in demand. My social obligations tended to keep me out of the house a great deal."

A working mother then.

"Meryl could always be counted on though!" her mother said brightly. "She was always polite and well turned out. She never insulted anyone, never put a foot wrong or caused me a moments worry. Everyone always remarked on what a well behaved child she was..."

'For a halffie' was the part that was probably left unsaid. Milly could sense it.

"And she excelled in all of her studies," her mother went on proudly. "She was an intelligent and hardworking student. She brought home the highest marks and was top in her class at the Renonciate school she attended. She was even chosen as the leader of her class to handle the details that the instructors needed taken care of, an honored position."

Her mother was clearly proud of her daughter, and just as learly oblivious to what was really important.

"But who were her friends?" Milly asked next. Kalaedra sobered.

"I don't really know that she had any. If she did, she didn't speak about them to me. She'd mention a few boys and girls that she had fun with in her other life in the outlands but it always used to trouble me to be reminded that she would leave me so I asked her not to speak about it, and she never did. I regretted that later of course, but I was still a young mother whose only daughter was not with her from most of the year. It was hard for me."

That last had sounded plaintive. it seemed like the mother-daughter relationship between them could use a little work.

"So then," Kalaedra said. "Tell me what her life is like out here."

"Sempai is my senior at the Bernardelli Insurance Society," Milly volunteered. "She's a Class A-1 Disaster Investigator, that's the best of the best, and we get all the really tough exciting assignments. You have to be Class A-1 to travel the wildest parts of the outlands. Right now we're assigned to keep an eye on Mister Vash here." Milly pointed over at where Vash was sprawlwd out limbs akimbo, into the nearby chair, blowing bubbles into his tea like a child.

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Kaledra said, her brow furrowing in puzzlement.

"It our job to follow mister Vash around and make sure he stays out of trouble," Milly elucidated. "If he has any accidents then sempai has to assess the damages and write reports back to the main office so that they can pay out damages. If mister Vash tries to skip town on us, as he so often has, it our job to track him down wherever he runs to and make certain to stay with him. He's under twenty-four hour surveilance."

Kalaedra seemed to be running Milly's report of how the matters stood against her own private assessment of things and coming up short.

"...I'm afraid I don't understand you," she said at last. "Is this normal practice for outlanders to require supervision?"

"Nope. Just Vash," Milly said cheerfully. "He's a special case. You see he's really Vash the--"

"I don't think she needs to know that detail Milly," Vash interrupted desperately. "And ix-nay on the ampede-stay."

"Oh, sure mister Vash," Milly said innocently.

"So... you are not her gaurdsman then?" Kalaedra said to Vash. "You are not sharing her abode to protect her?"

"I think she sees it sort of the other way around sometimes," Vash said, scratching the back of his head and giving a sheepish, slightly embarrassed smile.

"And this young lady is assigned to work with her, and not as a servant?"

Where would she get an idea like that? Perhaps she caught Meryls tendency to take command of a situation and interpereted it as her being the one in charge of things. Milly reflected on that for a moment; her sempai was the one who basically ran the household; she made certain that the wages brought in went to bills and food beofe "fripperies" like pudding and donuts and nights out on the town, she always made certain that dinner was ready on time and the laundry was done and the dishes washed and the house kept mostly clean.

:But Semapai seems to enjoy it: Milly thought with a small smile of remembrance for the contented look on her seniors face at the sight of a basketful of clean laundry being folded and put away and the pantry stocked with food for that week. So what if she considered herself as being the "strict mommy" of the household?

"Of course not," Milly said, batting her hand to dismiss the notion. "Meryl just likes to make sure things are done, that's all."

"You share her household," kalaedra said slowly, as if coming to grips with a strange new world. "But you are neither her family, her servants or her guards?"

Vash whispered in an aside to Milly

"What kind of household does she live in where everyone around her are either family, servants or guards?"

Milly shrugged in answer. Well, Kalaedra had said that Renonciate society was different, after all. It appeared that it was very different.

"Ah!" Kalaedra said brightly, looking over at Vash as he took a sip from his tea.

"So then you are her concubine!"

Vash choked on his tea, and erupted in an unexpected coughing fit. Milly was coughing too, but she was doing it to hide the giggles fromt he look on Vash's face.

"Did I say something wrong?" Kalaedra asked curiously next, looking from one of them to the other for an explanation.

"C-C-C-" Vash said, with this indescribably look on his face, like he was half unwilling to believe such a thing might be possible and partly wishing it were true.

"I would have thought by now that she'd have at least one," Meryls mother went on, partly to herself. "I mean, she is a pretty girl and always has been, get's that from me you know... And she seems to have her own household settled nicely. I had just assumed that the term "housemate" was the outlander term for concubine. It seems that this isn't the case. You mean you just only share a house, and nothing else? That's so boring."

kalaedra looked so confused and disappointed that Milly partly wanted to reach out and pat her shoulder. Then something else appeared to occur to her.

"So then who's bed is she sharing?" Her tone implied that the girl had darned well better be sharing someone's bed!

"Meryl sleeps alone," Milly said,trying to hide her own expression of disappointment at that. She'd been so sure that after a week together something would have happened between the two of them.

Kalaedra's response to that was a blank, incredulous 'you're kidding me, right?' look. She looked positively dumbfounded.

"She... she sleeps alone?" Kaladra said, her tone dismayed. "What is wrong with the men in this town? Surely at least one of them can see how pretty she is! She must have had offers! This is terrible!"

Milly and Vash exchanged shocked looks, but the reason for the strange monolog became clear a moment later as Kalaedra wailed in dismay

"I'm never going to have grandchildren!"

"is that what all of this is about?" Vash muttered to Milly While Kalaedra got up to pace the deck in all of her silk-berobed and jeweled glory.

"Apparently so," Milly muttered back. Suddenly inspired, and with the thought of perhaps killing two birds with one stone, Milly to Kalaedra

"If it's any consolation, the only reason none of the men in this town will go after Sempai is that they're scared she'll hurt them." Milly decided she was going to keep silent on the fact that Milly had "suggested" to the men down at the well that mister Vash might take it amis if anyone went about messing with Meryl, or rather "the lady in his life" had been the exact words she'd used.

Kalaedra suddenly paused in her pacing and abruptly turned to face Vash with a very narrow calculating look. Milly was amused to recognise it as the one so often adorning the face of her Sempai when she'd gotten a notion into her head

"You there," she said in a preemptory, commanding tone. "You share her abode. If she's really your guardian rather than the other way around, simply tell her that you will not be alone for that "twenty-four hour surveillance" and she should attend you for all twenty four of them. In your sleeping chamber. With you. Alone."

Kalaedra looked very pleased with herself for having found such a neat and obvious solution to her little problem. Vash however looked less than pleased, Milly could see white around the entirety of his eyes, they were so wide with panic. He was physically edging back in his chair, cringing at the very thought of it.

"She-" Vash squeaked. "She'd kill me."

"You're a man aren't you?" Kalaedra said, waving a hand dismissingly at his concerns.

"Yeah, but I had always rather favored dieing of old age rather than being ripped apart limb from limb and eaten!" Vash protested. Milly shot him an admonishing look for his comment on Meryls only occasionally violent tendencies. She really wasn't that bad, she just felt that she always needed to put on a front in order to keep people from dismissing or underestimating her out of hand. It was because people saw how short and tiny she was and thought "oh! A cute little doll! I'll just pick her up and hug her for myself!" and Meryl hated having her exquisite self handled.

"Well, no matter," Kalaedra said, dismissing the situation. "I've brought enough young men for her to choose from, she's bound to like one of them."

Vash and Milly exchanged another long, speaking look. Then, Kalaedra paused in her pacing once more and turned to look at him, another odd little calculating look on her face.

"You... Milly has just said that Meryl's task is to keep you under surveillance, Vash?"

Uh, yeah," Vash said a little hesitantly wondering if she was going to try and tell him to do something like order her into his bed or something equally foolish, futile, and life threatening.

"So that means that wherever you go, she is bound by her task to follow you..." Kalaedra said, her look turning from speculative to sly.

"She and Milly have done so in the past," Vash said, cautiously, not entirely trusting that look on her face. Under his breath he added. "No matter how many times I tried to ditch them, she always managed to find me."

"Ah!" Kalaedra said, her face brightening. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in seeing the stronghold of the Renonciates? I would extend to you the invitation of staying in my own household."

Vash blinked, this was sudden. But looking back over at what the woman had just said, Vash thought he might have caught the real meat behind her offer. Wherever he went, Meryl was bound to follow him, so if Vash suddenly decided that he wanted to visit the Renonciate stronghold, Meryl would have no choice but to go along with him.

:And as an added benefit, it'll get rid of those guys camped out on the front lawn out there: Vash thought, quick to see the advantages. He'd been wondering how to find a way to wrangle and invitation to see this strange culture that had renounced the ways of mainstream Gunsmoke and here it was offered up to him.

"Sure, i'd be happy to come see your city," he said easily. Meryl would be less than happy, he was betting, but that was what she got for picking fights.

"Your brother, Meryl has said, is ill," kalaedra said next. "If you like I could order some of Sanctuary's finest Healers to look in on him."

Vash was taken aback, and thanked her. He wondered why she used the word Healer instead of doctor, he got the strange feeling that thier ways of tending to the sick an injured were different from modern medicine. He hoped they didn't involve herbs, incense and dried monkey privates or something.


	6. Chapter 6

"Don't make decisions without consulting the group!" Meryl huffed distemperedly at him when he informed her later that evening that she should probably start packing because they'd be leaving soon.

"Just remember," Vash sing-songed, waggling a finger teasingly at her. "Everytime you point your finger there's three more pointing right back at you." She looked like she wanted to take the finger off for his temerity.

"What are you implying," Meryl growled, seriously looking like she was ready to start tearing strips off from him.

"You invited all those people here for a visit, you shouldn't be surprised that it backfired."

Vash was really enjoying having the upper hand on her in an argument for once. She couldn't even really argue back against him either. This was fun.

"Do we have to go?" she asked plaintively, and Vash smelt victory in the offing.

"I think it would be best," he said and his tone and demeanor turned serious. "For a number of reasons. First among them is the reason you invited those swaggering peacocks out there in the first place, and that is that we don't know for certain that Knives is going to want to play nice when he wakes up."

Meryl nodded, reluctantly conceding the wisdom of his objectedions.

"Next," Vash said raising another finger up o join the first finger. "I think he'd benefit from seeing that not all people like o do things the same way. His major objection is that people rely on the Plants too much in order to get by, if i can find a way to shoot that one down, I can probably make him give up his crusade."

"It's different Vash," but here Meryl held up a warning hand. "But it's no panacea either. Renonciate society may seem like this perfect little utopia from the outside, but it has its bears and its lions too. You should be aware of that, especially if you;re going to spend any amount of time in Forbidden City."

"You, um, you don't like the Renonciates do you?" he asked next, cocking his head sideways at her.

"I don't dislike them," meryl replied. "They're not bad, I won't even say they're wrong, in fact there are a number of practices they have that I think regular society could benefit from. However... they're just so..." Meryl fished for a word that could describe what seemed to be a general feeling of unease with the way she felt about them.

"Just so what?" Vash asked curiously. If they were walking into a trap or a dangerous situation, he wanted to know about it.

"They're just so... insular," she seetled for at last, her brow furrowing as she tried to explain. "They live in thier city of Sanctuary, and it truly is a great city. In size it rivals any of the major metropoli here on Gunsmoke, it's certainly far more beautiful than any other city I've ever seen, no giant plant bulb for one thing. I can't even begin to describe the beauty and care they put into everything, every building, every street, even down to the light-posts that light it at night have all been made to look beautiful or artistic in someway. Everyone enjoys what you would call modern conveniences, proper lighting on the streets, well paved roads, sewage, conveniences to keep food cold and cook it, heat and cool the water, and so forth though nothing looks exactly as it does in the rest of Gunsmoke. They have a really good way of life, but at the same thime there's just..."

meryl looked a mix between puzzled and disturbed.

"it's all very orderly," she said. "As far as the people of Sanctuary are concerned, the rest of the world might as well not even exist. Thier food comes from the farming patties surrounding the wall around the city, their caravans that they send out a few times a year bring back all the raw goods they can't readily get hold of, like metals, and they make everything they could possibly need in the shops inside the walls. Sanctuary is very self-sufficient, if the tiny little bit of trade they do engage in outside the City should dry up, they probably wouldn't even notice. That's not what's always bothered me about them though. They never do anything new. They don't welcome new ideas or innovations, except in a very very limited scope and that has to be okayed by a council of some kind. Everything is strictly controlled, ordered, measured and arranged there. There's very little room for free-thinking or experimentation. I mean, my great grand-parents on my mother's side probably lived their lives the exact same way as my mother does now, except for this trip to the outlands. Everything there is so ridgid and stagnant that if I spend any amount of time there, I want to scream."

Vash took a long moment to think over her particular objection to going back o Sanctuary.

"Let me see if I understand you," he said after a long moment. "You don't like Renonciate Society because it is too rigid? To unbending, too controlling, too authoritarian?"

Was she even getting the irony?

"Exactly!" Meryl said.

Apparently not.

:So it is true what they say: Vash thought in amazement. :The things you can't stand in other people are the things in yourself that you don't like."

"Well between you and me," Vash said, deciding that he wasn't going to point out the peculiarities in her own character. "I think a place like that would suit Knives to a tee. I say we give it a try and if we don't like it or it doesn't work out we can always go somewhere else."

"Okay," she sulked a little, shoulders slumped in reluctant defeat. he wondered if he should offer to buy her an ice cream or something.

"I just want you to know for the record," meryl added. "That's I'm doing this under protest. I mean, heaven knows I don't want to have to deal with the rest of the Shaper's Houses sending over their uncontracted scions to look me over."

Vash was brought up short by that. Great, more suitors. vash was half-tempted to change his mind about going (which he suspected was the reason Meryl had made that particular objection) but decided that getting through to Knives was more important han his particular objection to Meryl's family's chosen lifestyle.

"Protest noted, but we're still going," he said.

"I'll make the arrangements," Meryl grumbled. "At least I'll get to quit those awful side-jobs."

Vash blinked a little, unaware that she had disliked the work she'd had to do in order to continue to rent the place she'd found for them. Of course, to be honest he'd never aske either.


	7. Chapter 7

The ships were even more impressive from the inside than they were from the outside. They weren't made of wood, but from some kind of alloy he couldn't identify right off hand. The "sails" weren't large squares of canvas cloh designed to catch the wind like how most people thought of sails as being, but were instead some thin sort of polymer with a current running through it that caught the light of the sun and converted it into energy to run the ship. he ships themselves hovered off the ground about a good four feet from he surface of the sand and rode smothly and silently over the air of the desert.

The quarters he and his brother had been given were less a cabin and more of a suite. Everyting about it, spoke of opulence and luxury from the thick persian rug carpeting in the chambers to the paper and paneling on the walls. The sitting room to the fore of their bedroom was thickly carpeted and the desk, large table for private dining, and chest of drawers for storage were all of fine heavy oak wood done in clasical style, the fabrics were of deep red and gold colors off-set with creme or brown accents. The matching sitting set with two wingback chairs, a long chaise lounge and a shorter sofa set around a low table in front of a faux fireplace were all of matching In their bedroom he had to share with Knives there were two full double beds bolted securely to the wall and floor with raw silk sheers hanging from the poles and a matching spread set in heavy damask silk along with enough pillows and cushions to arm an army for a pillow fight. The wide wall of windows to one side (something not seen in ordinary 18th century style ships like the one this was modeled after) was hung with silk and velvet-silk draperies. The bathing chamber off to one side didn't have a tub (for reasons of practcality he'd bet) but the showering stall it had was mosaic tile and the sinks and modest covered comode were all of elegant glassy native stone sealed from moisture and brushed brass fixtures.

They were nice, very nice. Even better was that Kalaedra seemed to have assigned a servant to them; Vash wasn't certain whether the servant was assigned to them personally or simply to thier quarters but Vash always found his breakfast waiting for him after he emerged from the sleeping chamber and his night clothes laid out waiting for him when he went o turn in. The guy was ubiquitous too. Vash had tried to tell him at first that he could take care of him self and not to go to any touble on his account and he'd bowed perfectly politely and took himself off. The moment Vash turned his back or went for a walk, he found that everything had been neatly and seamlessly managed down to the last detail. Vash gave up after that. Knives might be used to it, but Vash had certainly never been waited on hand and foot before, and he found that he was sort of enjoying it a little.

"See how much you like it after you discover that you have no privacy," meryl said distinctly after Vash had made that remark to her one day. He hadn't thought of that. Still, it was sort of nice.

The journey itself was enjoyable too. The ships moved very fast over teh sands, as fast as any hover-class vehicle from lost technology could go, though when Vash went to try and get a closer look at the engine room in the bowels of teh holds at the bottom of the ship he was politely but firmly sent on his way. The "guests" that was, Kalaedra, Meryl, Milly and the other renonciates on board thier vessel that weren't part of the very small crew, took turns entertaining each other in thier quarters. Music was played, stories were told, the Renonciates gossiped about people who were absent. It turned out that Meryl's mother was an inveterate gossip, there was nothing she didn't know about the goings on inside the upper eschelons of any of Sanctuaries leading families. Meryl, it seemed. was twice as reticent about gossiping about anyone to make up for it. Vash learned popular versions of common games played among thier people, they ranged in complexity from the simple and fun to the complex and long-running. In this fashion they whiled away the hours, sometimes picnicking on the deck of the ship or taking in some sun.

The major change, one that still shocked him at times, was the ongoing argument between Meryl and her mother about what she would be wearing. Kalaedra insisted that since she was returning hom for a visit, meryl should dress as a proper lady of their house and wear the garb common o the renunciates. Meryl insisted right back that she was visiting Sanctuary because she was following her work, namely she was going because Vash was going, and so she would continue to wear her regular office clothes. Now, Vash was all for a little change in the wardrobe, he'd seen some of the clothes renonciate women wore, wrapped saris and slitted silk skirts, halter tops and thin gauzy chemises and was rather hoping that kalaedra was going to win the argument. So far, meryl had dresseed as she pleased much to Vash's private disappoinment.

& & &

"There it is," Meryl said looking out from the bow of the ship they were on to a dark speck on the horizon. Vash had noted it earlier, but his vision was sharper than most people (all part of not being human) he was busy enjoying the veiw... Meryl had a nice backside.

Vash wandered over from the spot where he was enjoying a nice snack that the kitchens had sent up. Renonciates, he had discovered, had a great love of food. They enjoyed a varied breakfast, an after-breakfast snack, a massive luncheon with a nap in the afternoon, onesies which concisted of another lovely little snack, dinner, supper and often a nightcap and snack before bed. it was amazing that all of the Renonciates he'd met were all skinny as rails too, one would think that with as much as they ate they'd be fat like a milwaukee bratwurst frau. Meryl said that they buned it all off with the work they did, but never specified what that work was.

There was a shimmer on the horizon and at first Vash thought that it was just the usual heat haze and he was partly right, but most of it was a sparkle from off the ground.

:Wait, could that be?: he wondered, squinting forward and joining Meryl and Milly from her position on the bow. He blinked, but his eyes weren't lying to him. It was water! To the fore of the rapidly growing speck on the horizon there was a silvery gleam that denoted real water on the surface. The fist time that Vash had ever seen anything remotely resembling the lakes or oceans that he'd read about from books of old Earth had been the time at the schezar manor when the crater had filled up with water. If his eyes weren't lying to him, what he saw before him now was easily three times that size!

"Those are the farming patties," Meryl said a moment later. "They surround the city of Sanctuary and grow all of the food for the people inside. The water you see isn't quite as much as it looks like, even though it stretches out for a distance outside Sanctuaries walls, it's only like two feet deep. Just deep enough to keep from evaporating away completely, but not too deep that you can't grow things in it. They get refilled twice a year by the efforts of the Shapers and the Sources. Each flooding comes with a rich nutrient-filled silt in it that settles to the bottom and nourishes the crops of rth next year."

Vash's brow furrowed in puzzlement.

"Refilled? You mean that water is stored inside the city, right?"

"Not stored," Meryl replied and refused to say another word on the matter.

In an hour they had reached the edges of the farming patties. The ships were stopped at a large flat place that looked like some kind of landing platform. It was lined with several small buildings on one side, like a miniature outpost. There was a small inn, a trade-post, a watering station, and what appeared to be a customs building.

"This is the harbor," meryl announced as the ships pulled up and stopped along the place. "This is where, if the city absolutley must play host to a trading caravan, they house the traders so that they don't have to open up thier precious city gates and let outsiders in. All transactions take place here so that the city might be free of the taint of outsiders."

Vash regarded her with raised eyebrows. That was a little extreme, they didn't even let in trade? Vash suddenly got the feeling that he was going to be stared at like some kind of outlandish curiuosity.

:Oh boy, Wolfwood would hate this place: Vash thought humorously. he hadn't liked visiting Sky City because they people living there had had much the same attitude. Vash mentally prepared himself.

"Here, our things will be loaded and brought along later," meryl said, following her mother and the other Renonciates as they loaded themselves into a tram-like conveyance inside a clear tube that led straight into the city. Unlike the quarters in the ship, there was nohing oppulent about the interior or the plain, utilitarian conveyer; apparently this was meant to ferry the workers to and from the feilds. The scenery fairly whizzed by them as the rail started off. It ran absolutely silently and with no friction Vash looked outside the windows ont he way in.

Light reflected off the water in the large feilds of various crops being grown. The feilds were broken up by ridged canals that joined the main roads leading into the city, spreading out over the shining surface of the pale waters like strands of spiderweb in the sun. The surface of the water was broken by tiny, evenly spaced sprouts that were evidently just now being planted.

Laborers bent thier backs to the task of farming the feilds, tending thier crops, dressed in simple kilts of linnen and white tunics tied with belts. They didn't look like they were being overseen or anything.

"Those farmers?" Milly asked, sighing one man with three younger boys, assumedly his sons, working int he feilds beside him.

"They're free farmers," Meryl replied. "They all live in the city, and part of their crops go as a sort of "tax" to pay for the luxuries they enjoy as citizens. That food goes, generally, onto the tables in the Forbidden cities of the Shapers and the Sources."

"There are two of them?" Vash asked next.

"Yes, in Sanctuary, I suppose you could say that there is a sort of city within a city. The regular city of Sanctuary is filled with just your average, normal every day people going about thier lives. The farmers work the feilds, the professions provide goods and services for everyone, administration takes care of the details of taxes, law, city regulations and so forth. But on either side of the main city, just inside the walls on the easternmost part and the westernmost part there are two walled off cities that are called Forbidden Cities. The Forbiddine City on the west end is for the Shapers, and the forbidden City on the east end is for the Sources. When you look around Sanctuary proper you'll notice right away a wide, decorated avenue running directly out from each place down the middle to a walled place in the center of the city... that's where the Shapers and the Sources meet four times a year at the great festivals of the solstices and equinoxes. That's when they do their work that enables Sanctuary to exist in such relative peace and prosperity. The Forbidden City of the Sources is made of palace complexes, or so I've heard, and the Forbidden City of the Shapers is divided among the twelve Houses."

"Why does one have a palace-complex, and the other separate houses?" Milly asked.

"Because Shpaers only run in certain bloodlines, you won't find an unexpected Shaper cropping up out of nowhere. But a Source can show up unexpectedly from any kind of bloodline from a farmer to a family of crafters, to a family that until now has done nothing but weave cloth. it's more expedient to have a palace complex and simply asign the new shaper rooms within it, or, when the Source finds a lifemate, to assign them one of the smaller domicile-courts on the outer edge of the palace complex."

Vash was reading the unsaid in her tone, those Sources, whatever a Source was, were kept carefully within the observation and control of the people of Forbidden City and thus, presumedly, the ones who ran Sanctuary. Might be one of those bears and lions she mentioned.

The came a last to the city gates proper which opened slowly to admit them after Kalaedra made herself known to the bored looking guard at the top.

Vash couldn't really tell from street-level, but he had the feeling that, judging from the outside, the city was huge.


	8. Chapter 8

They were settled in to the mansion and grounds that belonged to Meryl's family, or "House" as it was reffered to. The gardens were lovely. They were not large, as they had to fit into the area inside the walls of their section of the Forbidden city and have room for the house, but very well laid out and tended. They didn't bother with a kitchen garden as all of ther foodstuffs were provided to them, which left the entirety for pleasure gardens. The front gate opened into a small but elegant courtyard garden with a manicured court, and fountain in the middle surrounded by boxed palms along the sides. At the back of the house was a peristylium (a pillared outdoor entertainment area just outside the house) leading out to a larger garden with neat graveled paths, a large water-garden with lilies and koi in the sculpted ponds, and a small sculpted "wilderness" on the left hand side. Along all the sides inside the walls there were nooks and seating areas in various types of gardens for people to lounge around in and entertain.

The house itself was more than adequately sized. Formed after the roman style, there was an open air atrium with a reflecting pool leading to the front door flanked on both sides by two stories of public rooms like the library or the main receiving room or the study. Those roms were large enough to accomodate a number of guests and they all opened on the to the "outdoor rooms" made of stonework patios with large stuffed sofas and lounging couches for those who wanted to read and converse out of doors. At the back, just at the outside of the peristilium was an actual, honset to goodness, swimming pool! A place that was filled with dallons and dallons of water just for someone to swim in. He hadn't been able to believe it the first time he'd seen it. There weren't any plants or fish in it, it was just a large pool of clear water deep enough to swim in.

Of the interior of the house, most of the ground floor was given to elegant public rooms for entertaining guests and hosting parties at the fore and hidden away in a corner at the back were mostly the kitchens and laundries and housing for the live-in servants who tended the estate. Up a sweeping banistered stairway was a second story that had large beautiful suites for the family and any guests. If Vash had worried that he might be putting them out, he neededn't have, there was enough room to host an army with suites to spare up there.

The suite he and Knives were given to stay in was as grand and oppulent as thier rooms on the ship had been, only to a factor of about ten. There was absolutley no expense spared in their furnishings or accoutrements, none whatesoever.

:Of course, with as wealthy and expensive as the rest of this place is, outfitting one measely little guest suite is probably not a problem for them: he thought.

Still, he'd never stayed in such luxury before, he'd bet that even the wealthy water-barons in the towns and cities across Gunsmoke had ever stayed in a place this luxurious before. All the furniture was made of real wood, even several different kinds of wood inlaid into each other with different stains on the grains of them, done in Byzantine patterns of octahedrons and squares and diamond patterns. His room wasn't so much a room as a suite of them, a sitting room to the fore with a chaise lounge upholstered in raw sky-blue silk with silver accent colors, a long sofa of a darker blue with white cushions embroidered in interlocking patterns, and two or three plush chairs arrayed around a with a light-toned wood with inlaid patterns in darker wood. The fabric of the upholstery was all silks in colors dyed to match, or embroidered damask. There was another room off to one side with a desk of dark wood and a shelves lining two of the walls filled with books on a variety of subjects and a wide window to let in the sunlight and under it was another seating set that matched the one in the front room clearly meant to read in. The bedroom was floored in cool pale marble and the two more-than-adequately-sized beds had sheers of finest silk hanging in pale blue, and sateen sheets of a pale color just a shade bluer than pure white and an embroidered damask-silk coverlet. Everything in the room simply screamed luxury and comfort, but there was one little oddity that puzzled Vash, in a place where no expense was spared and every luxury was given, the bathroom was oddly small. It seemed incongruious, but there was a flush commode and a sink, but no tub or showering unit and with the way that place went through water it was an unusual discrepency that puzzled him.

His balcony overlooked a side-yard garden and lounging court, one of the members of the house he hadn't met yet was getting a massage by a servant with a basket full of fruit and a bottle of wine chilled in ice waiting nearby while another person (a guest by the evidence of their fine clothes) played idly on a stringed instrument nearby. A third person dandled a hand in a nearby small fountain, humming along to the melody.

"Sheesh," he mumbled to himself. The way this place went through water was positively criminal. It was like they weren't even worried that it would eventually run out. And that perplexed Vash. Everyone on Gunsmoke worried about water. It was as neccessary to life as having air to breathe, only on Gunsmoke it was a lot less certain. In every settlement he had ever come across since they had landed on this dustball there were laws, rules and strictures in place to make certain that the precious resource was not wasted. usually there was a certain ration of water allowed to every household per month and anything extra was charged a high fine in addition to the bill. There were no fountains, no canals and certainly no swimming pools! The very idea was close to blasphemy, no, it was even worse than blasphemy. But looking at the farming patties outside the wall and at the fountains and pools and waterfalls inside the forbidden city, it looked to him like these Renonciates weren't the least bit worried about running out of water. And Vash didn't understand how.

"Settling in okay?" Meryl called over to his balcony from her own about four balconies away from him. Vash might just have to remember that particular route some night.

"Yeah, just fine. Knives is still sleeping like a baby though," Vash said looking with a feeling akin to fondness at his most erstwhile brother.

"Good, I've already got servants driving me crazy. I escaped to the balcony and shut the door behind me. They seem dismayed at my travel gear and I think mum has them under orders to abscond with my clothes. I guess my days dressed as an outlander are over with." Meryl sighed and settled into a nearby stuffed chair on her balcony. vash took that as an invitation and walked over on the ledges.

"Be careful you'll fall and break your neck," she nagged absentmindedly like a mother might.

"nah," he said, arriving safely at her balcony and plopping down into the matching chair beside her. "You really unhappy about being back?" he asked next.

"I..." she hesitated, thinking it over. "I'm not sure. I'll be honest, I missed the luxury; smooth silk sheets, servants, wonderful food at all hours of the day... no work." She grinned a little.

"Sounds perfect," Vash said.

"But that's just the thing, it's not perfect. I have nothing of my own. Everything I own here belongs to the House and to the family... even my ovaries." She smiled a little to try and make the words into a joke, but the underlying btterness was there.

"Is that selfish, do you think?" she asked, turning to him.

Vash took a long moment to consider the question. Mery continued before he could answer however and he understood then that he was little more than a sounding board for her to work out her own point of veiw

"I can't entirely say that they're wrong either. I mean, look around you, compared to most of Gunsmoke, these guys have it in the cream! They're assured of ready water, steady crops, thier city is so far away from anyplace that no-one can come out far enough to raid them or take slaves. They may pay a cost for this but it's a cost that everyone goes into with thier eyes open. But still..."

"I wanted to ask you though," Vash said. "Where do they get all the water from? I mean, this must be one heck of an aquifer for everyone to use the water like it's going out of style, aren't they afraid that it'll all dry up?"

"No," Meryl said. "The water won't ever dry up, not as long as there are Shapers, and Sources too I suppose, but mostly Shapers."

Vash blinked at her in disbelief.

"Do you mean to tell me that those Shapers actually make water? Like a plant does?"

"I don't think they're anything like plants, but I do know that they make the water. They do it at every quarter year with their dances. There's the Fire Dance at the summer solstice, and the Water Dance at the winter solstice, and then there are the Air and Earth Dances at the Fall and Spring equinoxes."

"They hold a dance?" Vash said, looking at her strangely.

"Yes and no," Meryl said. "It's hard to explain. There's a special place in Forbidden City, right in the center of Sanctuary, where the Shapers go for these very special ceremonies. I've never seen one myself, but I've seen the young men being trained for it they learn very complicated series of steps and hand movements and they must perform them very precisely, if they are off by the slightest bit then whatever it is they do in the ceremony won't work and there will be no water for that quarter and the power in the city will be decimated until the next dance. I know that it's at those quarterly dances that the Shapers are allowed to be around the Sources, and I know the Sources provide whatever it is that the shapers use to make what the city needs. They say that the city itself, down to the very stones, was created into being by a conclave of Shapers."

"But you don't know what they do?" Vash said. "You don't know how this water and everything else is created."

"Oh, I'm nearly certain that I have it figured out," Meryl said. "Papa figured it out, though he could never find a way to replicate it without the intercession of a Shaper, and one Shaper alone couldn't do much of note. A handful of water before she was forced to rest, weak-kneed and exhausted."

That last sounded like it had been Meryl herself that had been the object of the experiment.

"You know that Plants recombine the molecules of matter in order to peplicate the things people need to survive on this world," meryl said as a matter of course. "Well a Shaper does the same thing, only instead of having the power available within themselves like a plant seems to, they draw the power off from the energy of the Talented, we call them Sources. Those are people kinda like Legato; telepaths, empaths, telekinetics, pschomets and others like that. For some reason, I don't know why, they produce a sort of special energy with thier minds that Shapers can tap into and use. Normal people do too, but to a vastly lesser extent. My dad figured that on the four festivals the Sources are brought to that place where the Shapers do thier Shaping and the Shapers tap thier energy and use it to make as much water as they can. I'm not entiely certain how it works, but I get the feeling that the workings of the thing are actually very intricate and they hall have to combine thier power. That's mostly all of what I know about it. Now you see why they have a breeding program in place, the survival of Sanctuary depends on the Shapers. If there are no more Shapers then the water dries up and so does the easy living."

"I see," Vash said; and he did see.

"Do people who are half-Shaper ever get invited into this conclave dance thing?"

"I've never heard of an instance of one, no matter what the stories say," Meryl said. "I, personally, think that it's because they can't take the amount of power flowing through them. I think that "weakness" in a Shaper is judged by how well they are able to conduct power rather than how they use it. That's just a guess though."

Vash suddenly smiled, knowing her well, and said

"You've tried it yourself before, haven''t you." It wouldn't be in keeping with her character if she hadn't.

"Well, yes and no," meryl said. "I discovered that one lone half-Shaper of herself cannot conduct a whole lot of energy, not enough to immediately produce something useful."

Vash sensed a but there.

"But?" he said.

"But what? You heard me," she replied.

"But you just said immediately," Vash told her. "So that means that there's the possibility that she can produce something useful over time."

"Well, there is that," she acknowledged, seemeing to enjoy leaving him hanging. "A great deal can be accomplished by manipulating very small things very precisely. But nevermind. It's nothing that is useable, at least not without further work at it."

"So then why didn't you or your father ever pursue it?" Vash persisted. It seemed pretty basic to him, and it seemed that if a society could live this well, that more people should be interested in doing this.

"All energy comes from somewhere and goes somewhere else, everything comes with a pricetag attached. A wise person will stop to consider the costs before they unleash some new demon upon the world and, if they deem that knowledge they pursue too dangerous, they will cease to pusue it," Meryl said severely.

"So you think that whatever end you or your father were after, the means used to get there weren't justifiable."

"Just so," Meryl replied. She sighed a little, looking for a moment like she had some terrible weight on her mind, then she shrugged and dismissed it.

"That's neither here nor there," she insisted.

"But if--" Vash tried again. Meryl held up a hand signalling that she would not discuss the matter any further.

"It's too dangerous to put into the hands of people I neither know, nor trust, and if the thing is known sooner or later it will come to that. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, even if you start something out with the best of goals, there are those out there who are greedy and self-interested enough to use the thing to thier own ends and damn the rest."

Vash again tried to protest that.

"I'm not saying that everyone will, but believe me, with a thing like this, once the damage is done it can't be undone. Too many people could get hurt or killed for me to risk it despite the noblest of intentions. Let the work die when I do, and good riddance I say."

"Are you sure about that?" Vash asked skeptically. He didn't even entirely know what she was talking about, save that she seemed to have discovered something that could be both extremely beneficial, and extremely harmful.

"Didn't you make the same decision yourself?" Meryl replied, gesturing to his real arm. She was reffering to the fact that his arm could turn into an angel arm, a living conduit for great energy. It was the same energy that the plants used to run thier cities, but twice now Knives had used that same arm as a weapon to cause massive amounts of destruction. Was Meryl saying she knew of something similar?

:Well, yes, she has me there: he was forced to admit. Vash reluctantly nodded, respecting her decision in the matter.

Sometimes it was simply better to let sleeping dragons lie. The system that Gunsmoke had right now wasn't perfect by any means, but it worked. In time, perhaps a better way could be found, hopefully before Knives got fed up with their "dithering" (as he called it) and just killed them all. Maybe the way the Renonciates had would work.

"So what are you going to do now?" she asked next, quietly. "About Knives I mean."

"Well, I'm hoping that we'll finally get a chance to just talk things over," Vash said after a small pause. "I'm also hoping that we can get a look around this place, and it'll help out my case."

"Ah, I thought that was part of your reason," Meryl nodded to herself. Vash didn't know why he was so surprised that she had figured that out on her own, part of him still thought of her, just a little, as the woman who liked to jump to the nearest obvious conclusion and run with it. he knew darned well that the brisk-business woman was partly a mask but sometimes it continued to surprise him how much she actually noticed and never let on about. Milly was just downright uncanny, but Meryl had her eerie observation skills as well. He often wondered why she chose o ignore so much of what she'd had to have discerned and figured out for herself.

"I'll give you a helping hint, and this is a little secret known by Renonciate women everywhere," she said with a small smile. "It's much much easier to get someone to do what you want them to or to see things from your point of veiw if you make them comfortable first."

"Oh?" he inquired. He hadn't thought of that angle.

"It's true," she nodded. "People become much more amenable if you bribe them a little with luxuries. It kind of... greases the wheels a bit. I'm sure you'll find that he's a lot easier to handle when he's being pampered and fed than when he has to try and see your point of veiw from an empty belly with sand in places where no sand should be."

Vash chuckled a little at that, part of it was amusing because he had the sneaking suspicion that she was right.

Vash decided that for the time being, he wasn't going to give any more thought to the larger matters.

"Wanna go get something to eat?" he invited.

"Sure, Milly's already out in the back garden. She's got a cotorie of curious Renonciaates who have nevr seen and barely heard of the outside world and they are all hanging off her every word as she describes what things are like out there. She may yet be responsible for leading an internal revolt to aid the deprived; if she does, then my job here is done," Meryl said with an impish smile.

"I never took you for a rabble rouser," vash teased.

"Hey, there's a rebel under all these tights and blouses," Meryl joked back.

The house was still amazing, even as he walked through it part of him couldn't get over the oppulence and granduer of it. Accompanying that was a feeling of Age. It didn't feel like the old ships crashed at various angles on the surface fo the planet or all the little nooks full of the remnants of technology from a passed era, it didn't have the run-down desperately cobbled-together feel to it, like scavengers feeding on a carcass. The ediface with all of its elegance and graduer had more of a feeling of history, of a place that had aged gracefully and by simply being itself was worth of respect, like an old wise man who by simply being what he was commanded the respect of his family.

He paused to stare at a massive wall opposite the grand receiving room, which was a room, by its size and granduer that was clearly made to cow the lesser classes and impress the equal class with its taste and elegance. Everything about it stated that the owners of teh residence were of a fine and noble family, worthy of any persons automatic respect. The wall was carved with a tree-like diagram of Meryl's family geneology on her mothers side. He sought Meryl name near the bottom first, of course and it was inside of a losenge with a small symbol. he was surprised to note that there were several other names beside hers, all stemming from Kalaedra. Boys names, with some kind of sheild-like symbols in muted tones and colors outlined behind thier names.

"You have brothers?" he questioned, looking around a little warily. Older brothers were well-known to be protective of ther sisters, especially from strang men from out of town.

"Half-brothers," she corrected. "You see those symbols behind thier names? Those are thier housemarks, they're all contract-births. Technically I am not thier "sister" though we share a common mother. They are scions of thier proper houses, and have no affiliations with this family outside of that connection. Really, they are only listed for geneology purposes. but when they have contract-heirs those too will be followed for genetic tracking purposes."

"How do you know who belongs to your house, then, and who doesn't?"

"Well, of you look from the original ancestor, the first of our House, the ones in Red are full-blood scions of House Pisces, that's my mother's house by the way. The ones in violet are concubine-births. The ones in gold are actual marriage alliances..."

"Not many of those," he noted. "Do these people not marry?"

"It's not as common among the Shapers as it is everywhere else," Meryl replied. "Marriage is a promise of fidelity between two people, they are considered married for life and may look to no other for... well, you know. Anyway, it simply isn't in the best interests of the House to loose thier sons and daughters, and more importantly the income they can bring in by contract births, to another house."

"What about you?" he asked next.

"I will do as I please," Meryl replied. "I could bless my papa for his Outlander status, it's given me far more freedom than anyone in this place. Besides that, most Shaper-born don't want to get married because then they would loose their concubines. A marriage alliance is almost always ever arranged in the case of a fued or bad-blood between families as a way to resolve their differnces. there are rare cases where the pair actually want to tie themselves in bonds of love but..." Meryl shrugged, indicating that she didn't really see why they would bother.

Vash regarded her for a long moment. But decided to let matters rest.

"C'mon, let's go get some food, I'm starving," he said instead.

"You're always starving," Meryl retorted. "I don't know where you put it all."

"I owe it all to clean living," Vash maintained as he subtly guided her out towards the nearest side yard with a hand nearly touching her waist. Unfortunately, they were still in this no-touching phase; there was so much left to do and work out in the meantime that everything else, including this, was going to have to go on the back burner. Perhaps it wouldn't be for much longer though.

He looked over at her from the corner of her eye, taking in that wonderful outline that had become such an important part of his world lately. There were times now, especially lately, when he wondered how he'd ever gotten along without her.

The rest of the day was spent in a nice leisurely fashion. Meryl and her mother retired to one of the side gardens out in the sun on long benches right beside a small koi-pool and fountain for a nice long massage. It had been such a long time since she'd been pampered and had leisure time. Chasing Vash all across the outlands and then trying to hold down two jobs and keep up a household wren't things that were condusive to relaxing.

"We've been invited to a masque at the House Capricorn," her mother informed her conversationally as one of the servants massaged Meryls calves and another painted her toenails.

"We?" Meryl questioned. "i hope by we, you mean you."

"I mean we as in the two of us," Kalaedra corrected her firmly.

Meryl sighed and looked over at her mother, clearly gauging her mood.

"Any chance i can beg exaustion from travel?"

"You'll be fully recovered from it in three days, I'll make sure of it."

"I don't have anything to wear," Meryl tried again.

"That won't be a problem, i've the house seamstress waiting on your call."

"I hate parties," Meryl said honestly. "Why must I go?"

"You don't socialize enough," kalaedra said.

"I go out all the time," Meryl protested immediately. "When Vash-"

"I've been talking with your Milly," Kalaedra said. "And while it may be true that you go out to "socialize" when he does to public establishments, such places being naturally beneath your dignity in the first place, you do no actual socializing. Instead, you watch over your charge and your partner like a mother hawk and when the evening is done you see them safely home. That's not socializing, that's playing mommy."

"I still hate parties here," she grumbled.

"I don't see why," Kalaedra said. "The food is better than anything you will find in the outlands, the entertainments are better, and so is the music."

"That's a matter of opinion," Meryl argued. "Though I have to admit that you're right about the food. It's the company that usually bothers me, they're all soooo..."

Kalaedra's face abruptly softened.

"I understand. I won't make you go if you don't want to." Before Meryl could heave a sigh of relief she went on. "After all, I'm only your mother, and what do I know of what might make my daughter happy? Just because I want her to have all the fine things in life she deserves doesn't mean anything I suppose."

Meryl looked at her out of the corner of her eyes, she knew what her mother was doing, she knew exactly what she was doing... and it was working anyway.

Kalaedra turned her dove-grey eyes on her daughter pleadingly, and her lower lip quivered a bit. meryl caved like a half baked quiche.

"Oh, alright," she grumbled. "One party, and then you agree that that'll be it for me."

"Wonderful!" Kalaedra said happily. Vash noted that she didn't reply to the latter half of Meryls statement. No-one could manipulate a girl into doing what she wanted like a mother could. Meryl sighed heavily and told the servant to start massaging her temples, she felt a headache coming on.

Meryl looked significantly over at Vash and said quietly so that only he could hear her.

"Perhaps it would be best for you and him, for the time being, if I made myself scarce for a while. I have no doubt that you have a lot of catching up to do between the two of you and I wouldn't want to get in the way of that. There is much here that can keep me occupied while you and he work your differences out between you. if you need advice, my mother specializes in inter-personal relationships as well, I'm sure she'd be happy to help. It would also perhaps be wisest if he felt, at least after waking that he will not have to share you."

Vash nodded, once again taken a bit aback by her astute observations. Part of him had thought that Knives would be much more amenable to humanity if he felt that he wouldn't have to "share" his brother with it. A lot of the acrimony between them stemmed, over the years, from simple jealousy.


	9. Chapter 9

It was later that evening and Vash had requested that meals be brought to him in his room for the present. He sat by his brother's bedside waiting with an anticipation that was partly tinged with nervousness and a little fear. He wasn't certain how his brother was going to take the place he awoke in. If the expression of anguish and emotional hurt on his face when Vash had shot him during ther battle was anything to judge by it was going to take some work to get a relationship between the two of them that was anything near approaching normal.

But there was a chance now. Vash didn't have to worry about his brother going ballistic and killing people, for this place had built-in defenses. He also didn't have to worry about any more of those assassins, mainly because the haven of the Renonciates was out behind the back of no-where, it took a weeks journey by airship going at speeds that even an ancient lost-technology hover would have been hard-pressed to keep up with. Vash wouldn't have been surprised to find that they were all the way on the other side of the world! There was no way that anything or anyone could come sneaking up on the two of them. He had all manner of little tidbits stored in the tiny mini-bar in one corner of the sitting room and two tall glasses of blended fruit juice jst waiting for when he came around. Meryl's advice about feeding him and making him comfortable was not without merit after all. It would be easier to convince Knives that Vash turly wanted his brother to be a part of his life if he demonstrated from the start that he was willing to dance attendance on him a little.

Vash could sense his brother slowly coming into consciousness from a deep healing sleep that the "healer" that Kalaedra had sent to look at his brother would be wisest to leave him in that state and let him heal himself on his own. The Healer had also looked at Vash with a long, narrow look that seemed to see straight into him after which his eyes had widened in a gasp and he had bowed low, almost throwing himself on the ground in his haste to show some deference that Vash wasn't certain how he had earned. It had been a little strange.

Knives cautiously sent out "feelers" to sense the world around him before he came into full consciousness. He seemed a little surprised when he noted his brothers presence so near and apparently waiting eagrely for him to wake up. Vash sensed a questioning thought brush against his mind and he answered

-Because I missed you of course, brother.-

There was a feeling of a momentary frown of puzzelment and then another inquiry, this one less hesitant and a little more demanding. He wanted to know where he was.

Vash raised a mental eyebrow at his brother's surly tone with him but answered him anyway.

-We're at the house of the family of a friend,- Vash said into his brother's mind. -They've agreed to host us here.-

Another question was fast on the heels of Vash's answer. What friend, and why had they agreed to host them, what were they expecting ut of it?

Vash sent his brother a mental image of Meryl reluctantly, because he also figured that Knives would pick up on the emotional attachments that came along with the image. He couldn't help it though, he really couldn't. Vash might be over a century old but he wasn't made of stone and he really cared about her. Knives' mental frown turned into a scowl. Vash hastened to reassure him by sending him the thought that Meryl had little interest in the affairs between the two of them, and sadly, would not be here most of the time... her mother had arranged that she would be taking "tours" (for lack of a better word) of the bowers of differnt houses to reaqquaint herself with the other families of the renonciates. The feeling of impending jealousy lessened, and Vash took that opportunity to welcome his brother back to the land of the living.

-Come on, Knives,- he said. -You're not getting any better laying there pretending to be asleep. Why don't you wake up so I can greet you properly.-

-Hmph,- Knives mentally grumbled. -Where am I?-

-I already told you, in the house of Meryl's family, her maternal side to be exact. Actually... we're smack in the middle of the stronghold of the renonciates.-

-WHAAAT?!- Knives mentally roared, causing Vash to wince away in pain. Knives went on.

-Now now, calm down. We're honored guests here,- Vash soothed.

-Why?- He asked, his tone edged with suspicion and querilousness.

-Because Meryl's mother wants her daughter with her, and I'm a means to an end,- Vash replied honestly. -Wherever I go Meryl is bound to follow, like Marys little lamb, so Kalaedra, that's Meryl's mother, invited us to stay here and extended the hospitality of her house for as long as we like.-

Knives mulled this over and decided that the reasons Vash gave were self-centered enough to pass muster in his own estimation of the species. Vash worried about Knives' ability to trust anyone at all. He shook his head a little at that.

-Here now, get up, I have some food waiting that I've saved for you," Vash said.

Knives heaved another tired mental sigh but at last one ice-blue eye opened, followed by the other one, double vision quickly centered in and he took in the room in one short sweep.

"Here," vash said, speaking outloud for the first time since Knives had woken up. He held out a large chilled glass of some blended fruity concoction.

"I'm told it's a Renonciate specialty. I asked for it without alcohol, I wouldn't want to mess with your system while you're still healing. Do you need help to drink it?"

Knives gave him a look that was saturated with dignity, gingerly raising his torso by himself (thank you very much) and propping himself against the small mountain of silk pillows and embroidred cushions. He glared a little at his brother as the wounds on the pressure points of his shoulders and legs twinged a little. They were mostly healed, but it still hurt in more ways than the physical apparently. Thier relationship had been strained to the breaking point, especially with the incident with Legato, Vash had wondered deep down how he was supposed to forgive his brother for that, but he figured that if you loved someone enough, you could forgive them anything.

He smiled a little to himself as he helped his brother support the heavy glass chalice filled with frozen fruit juice because he was too weak yet to handle it fully himself. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"At least you've chosen to remove yourself from those sties you often settle for," Knives grumbled as Vash laid out the food on an enormous round tray positioned between them on empty space between him and his brother on the vast bed that Knives was given to sleep in.

"It sounds like you approve of your surroundings," Vash said jovially, trying for a smile.

"Don't smile if you don't really mean it," Knives snapped. "But if you must know, yes. it's at least comfortable, and clean... and appropriate for us."

vash didn't have to say anything, he knew his brother could tell what he was thinking; part amusement and part exasperation at the thought that his brother was a snob.

"I am not," he grumbled, picking up a bunch of seedless grapes (that could not be bought for love or money in outer gunsmoke) and a delicate pastry and began eating.

"I'm just saying that as a superior species its about time they rendered us our due," he finished, reaching for a selection of sliced melons and orange sections arranged artfully with flavored ice shavings.

"I hate to break your heart Knives, but we're only guests here," Vash replied. "I think you should be on your best behavior."

Knives gave him a withering look and started in on another selection of fruits this one with yogurt and honey drizzled over them. Vash made a mental note that his brother liked fruit. Perhaps because in outer gunsmoke it was very dear and difficult to come by. Most people had to make do with artificial vitamin supplements in place of actual fruit.

"I've never heard anything of the renonciates, did they actually live then?" Knives inquired, sounding like he had expected precisely the opposite.

"Lived and prospered, by all appearences," Vash replied. "I was hoping you and I could figure out how they do it, and maybe..." Vash trailed off alloweing his brother to pick up the rest of the thought from his mind. Knives' eyes widened and he set fown the bowl of confection he was eating to stare at his brother in shock.

"What?" Vash asked a moment later. "That is your main objection isn't it? That they rely too much on our sisters to live on this world? Well, these people have found another way and they don't rely on anyone but themselves. If there were another plant here, i would be aware of it. Do you sense one?"

Knives frowned and his eyes became unfocused, obviously he was stretching out with his powers looking for the tell-tale energy signiture that was one of their kin. Vash fidgited impatiently. Suddenly, Knives gave a start.

An instant later Vash felt himself "sucked" into his brothers mind and a link with another... being, was established.

-Who?- the simple, naive questioning thought came into his mind.

-We are Knives and Vash,- Knives replied for the both of them. -We are like you, angels. I wasn't aware that there was another one who had been Born... how long have they kept you prisoner here?-

The query was greeted with a sense of puzzlement. The puzzlement was accompanied by images of a vast playroom full of toys, servants and governesses to take care of her, many people who visited the child to keep her company so she would not be lonely, and other children that came to visit her from time to time to play. They played games like hide and seek and tag and they taught her the hand and stick dances that they learned, the girls showed her how to sculpt flowers but she'd never managed the trick of it.

-But, they do not let you leave,- Knives said.

Vash could feel a mental brow-furrow from the strange angel.

She had never really felt any desire to leave this place. If she wanted to go outside there were plenty of gardens in the communal areas of the Source Palace Complex she could wander around in and her nursies were always nearby to keep her safe. She'd been out into the city a time or two and it was a facinating place, full of life and activity, but she'd found the noise and bustle to be a little unsettling, she liked her quarters and private garden better where she could eat as she liked, and sleep when she cared to, and her friends could come to visit when she was bored and wanted to play.

-You don't want to leave?- Knives said, incredulously. -Why would you willingly stay in the company of people who aren't like you?-

Vash felt the mental equivalent of a weird look from the other freeborn angel. She was perfectly happy where she was, why would she want to leave? As for being different than she was, well... Vash got the feeling that the angel was very young, mentally if not physically. her mental voice had the feel of belonging to a child, and not a terribly curious one at that. She didn't much care one way or the other that the people weren't exactly like her, they were her friends and they found a way to understand each other just fine.

-That's great,- Vash congratulated her. -Maybe when my brother is feeling better we'll come over and visit and we can play together.- Vash sent her mental images of him enjoying playing in the streets with other kids in outer gunsmoke, far away from the haven of the Renonciates. Vash sensed curiousity from her, she'd never heard of a world outside of Sanctuary before. None of the kids she played with had ever said anything about it, and neither had the adults. There were other people living far away?

-Yes, lots of them,- Vash replied easily, sending images of the cities and towns that had sprung up in the shadow of the great former SEEDs ships and the many many people that lived in them. Vash felt a feeling of shocked surprise from her. She'd never heard of any such thing. Would he come over and tell her about them?

-Perhaps sometime soon,- Vash promised. -My brother here is hurt because we... had a fight.- He deliberately toned down the acrimony and scale of thier battle and the centuries that it had gone on for so that her delicate sensibilities would not be bruised. Clearly the child was very very sheltered.

-Sad man,- she daid directly to Vash for the first time. Unfortunately for him, mental communication was vastly different from simply speaking with words, there were many layers to that comunication instead of relying on tone an body language as in phiscal speach, with telepathy thoughts often came accmpanies with emotions, memories and impressions it was less like talking and a little more like being innundated by another person. Unlike with speech lying mind-to-mind was nearly impossible, he couldn't do the fake smile and the sheepish headscratch to allay suspicions, and she had been able to pick up on things about his life and heart in thier simple communications link that he would have preffered to shelter her from.

-Er...- Vash said mentally, uncertain how to reply to her observations. He couldn't lie outright and say he wasn't sad, they'd both know it was a lie. so he temporized.

-It's getting better,- he reassured her. Unfortunaltely for him and any attempt at privacy he might have wanted to have, the reassuring statement came with an unauthorized mental image; one of Meryl from earlier that evening as he'd walked her to her room and bid her goodnight and she'd smiled softly up at him and told him to stay out of trouble. She'd looked perfect to him right then and the image that snuch past his flimsy mental barriers was even more perfect than probably the reality was.

-And there's Knives too!- Vash added hurriedly. Sadly though, that particular assurance rang hollow because everyone felt the fear and uncertainty accompanying it.

-Um, moving on...- Vash said, suddenly very much wishing this little three way conversation were at an end.

-I would certainly like to speak with you,- Knives said directly to the strange angel living her sheltered life somewhere in Forbidden City.

-Hey, no recruiting,- Vash said instantly. He got the feeling that Knives wanted to blow her little illusions about her human caretakers wide open. She seemed so sweet, Vash didn't want her being hurt by Knives less than complimentary veiws of humanity.

-Hmph,- Knives said. -We'll see.-

Shaela, for that was her name Vash realized, was feeling tired and wanted to go to bed now, Nursie had her bedtime snack and juice waiting for her so she didn't want to talk anymore.

-Sleep tight,- Vash said in a friendly tone and Knives cut off the mental connection.

"There, you see?" Knives said triumphantly. "They use our kin yet."

"I don't believe that the girl mentioned anything about being used, that certainly wasn't the impression I got. It seemed to me more like she was the child that everyone dotes on," Vash argued. "Besides, you shouldn't jump to conclusions without getting the facts first. I know you're eagre to prove the worst of these people but give them a chance first."

"Hmph. We'll see," Knives siad. He felt secure in his conviction that the worst about them would be proven eventually.

"I suppose we will, just make sure you behave yourself that long," Vash replied.


	10. Chapter 10

The day dawned bright and clear, painting the sheers around his bed and the ones hung near the glass double doors that led out to the balcony outside his room rose-gold with its light. His own internal alarm clock roused him from his sleep unwilling, and once he was awake, he couldn't go back to sleep. Vash was a morning person by nature and by training. His brother on the other hand was having no such difficulty in ignoring the suns, he was back in a healing sleep though it was a lighter sleep than his previous healing trance. 

Someone knocked softly on the door to thier room, the sense of the mental presence of the person was unfamiliar but benighn, probably one of the house's many servants. Vash rose from his bed and grabbed an nearby robe to throw on over the pants he wore to bed and went to see what the person wanted. When he opened the door, it was actually three people, two people held a large tray between the two of them filled with a very large breakfast; many varieties of fruits prepared to be eaten, yogurt, eggs (three different ways) oatmeal with cream and raisins and cinimon in it, freshly baked bread, sausages, ham slices, and fluffy pancakes as well as a carafe of orange juice, water, tea, and something that smelled like coffee. Vash tried not to feel disappointed that there were no donuts in evidence.

The third servant behind the ones bearing the tray between them carried towels and a basket of what looked to be bathing supplies.

"Your breakfast, sir," the servant with the towels said in a defferential tone. it was a young man, vash judged him to be about sixteen, maybe seventeen but not any older. "And after you've finnished with breakfast I would be pleased to show you where the baths are, a unique Renonciate custom that I am told that those of the outlands do not have."

"What custom?" Vash asked cluelessly as he made way for the breakfast. He hoped that the servant wasn't implying that they did not bathe.

"We of the renonciates, despite our other excesses, have the habit of social bathing," the servant explained as the other two servants efficiently brought a low table from elsewhere in the room and set up the food near the balcony, opening the glass doors to the balcony and pulling aside the sheers to let in the morning air, all moving with remarkable stealth.

"You... you all bathe together?" his eyes widened in surprise and dismay. there was absolutely no way that he was getting naked in front of a bunch of perfect strangers.

"Daily time at the baths is an important social event among our people," the servant answered. "It is where we gather, exchange news and gossip, relax, and discuss recent evets, we even often conduct business there. I am told that you of the outlands find being without clothes in front of people you do not know to be most discomfiting."

"Yes," Vash said, trying to think of another way he could get a bath that would not involve getting naked in front of people he didn't know and scaring them all away with some of the truly ugly scars on his body. "Yes we do."

"Fortunaletly for you then," the servant said smoothly. "House Pisces has played guest to Outlanders before and we have already reserved a private room for you and your kinsman."

Vash let out a sigh of relief. Knives was beginning to come around with the scent of breakfast wafting into the air. Vash sat down and tucked in, waiting as Knives took his sweet time coming into full wakefulness. 

"Here Knives," Vash said, bringing his brother breakfast in bed seemed like a good way to start things off. Vash had repurposed the tray to bring Knives a plate with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, fresh buttered bread, some of the fruits that he'd seemed to particularly like the evening before with yogurt and honey drizzled over them as he seemed to like it, and some of the orange juice to drink. Vash discovered that it wasn't actually made from oranges, or at least not entirely; it tasted also of mango, pinapple, bannana and one other fruit he couldn't place. It was quite good.

The servant seemed a little dismayed at first when he saw Vash serving Knives and moved to intercede but Vash gave a subtle headshake. He wanted to do this (and more importantly he wasn't sure if it was a good idea to have anyone near Knives when he'd just woken up and was likely to be irritable).

"How are you feeling?" he asked, when he settled down to eat.

-Better,- was Knives' answer. it seemed he wasn't interested in speaking out loud and was detirmined that Vash and he should fall back into their old habit of speaking telepathically to one another.

"Are you well enough to get around?" Vash said out loud, just as detirmined not to use telepathy. Knives was only doing it as a way to exclude anyone else from thier twin relationship.

-Unlike you, dear brother, I have developed ways to maximize our innate ability to heal and regenerate to their fullest extent. I am more than capable of getting up and around, even at so short a time after our confrontation,- knives "said" haughtily into his brothers mind, then added in a grumbling tone

-I still can't believe you won. Sheer dumb luck if you ask me.-

"Well I did win, Knives so you can stop treating me like I'm somehow blind or inferior to you just because I don't see things the way you do."

-In ferior?- Knives said, sounding truly surprised. -In what way do I treat you inferior? You are my twin, of all the people inhabiting the sands, you are my only equal, how could i treat you as an inferior?-

He truly sounded and felt like his was shocked that his brother could even think such a thing.

"You do," Vash replied, his tone even, but he was sure Knives could sense the hurt and pain that lingered behind his words. That was the other part of the reason why he didn't want to engage in a telepathic link with his brother... his emotions were, in many ways, still too raw for that. There was still much he had to forgive Knives for, and in many ways it would be a long healing process. But Vash wanted his brother back too... So he would start by being honest with him.

"You sent assassins after me with the specific purpose of trying to teach me a lesson, of trying to force me to bend to your will. That smacks of you feeling deep down that not only were you right and i was wrong, but that because you were right and I was wrong that you were somehow better than me and could force me to do what you felt was best. And then there's still July."

Ah yes, July. The day when Knives had forced Vash to resonate with him, forced open his angel arm and made it discharge enough in chaotic pure energy to utterly obliterate an entire city and everyone in it. Just wiped it right off the map. All those deaths, all that needless destruction, all of it, on the conscience of a man who valued life above all things. And then there was the ensuing bounty and all of the troubles that that had caused for him, the scars physical an emotional carved on his flesh and in his mind. The hard life of a constant fugitive, always running, never getting to stand still. Then on top of that, not only the assassins, but the fact that Knives had used Legato to torture him, teach him true suffering... and he had. Vash had broken the one rule he swore he'd never break, to take the life of another, in order to save the lives of the innocent. But it had been Vash who'd suffered in the aftermath of the incident, it had been Vash who'd screamed and Vash who thought he'd never find a way to live through the pain and shame of it. And it had been Knives, his own twin brother, the one who was supposed to know and love him best who had done it to him.

"It's a lot to forgive, brother," Vash said heavily. "We're here, now, in this place, because... to be utterly honest with you, I don't think I can trust you anymore. So much has happened between us that it's going to be hard to just wipe the slate clean. Wolfwood was my friend, you know, in the end he wanted to help me and not you. You ordered him killed. Your servant, Legato, hurt my friends. Your assassins hurt me in ways that I'm sure you gave them orders to. You yourself forced my angel arm in July and again in Augusta through him. It's just... It's a lot to forgive brother."

Knives sat there in the bed, his expression closed and brooding, his arms crossed and defensive and didn't say one word. Vash could not read him because he had his sheilds up, cutting off any chance he had of reading his emotions that way. It had taken Vash a lot to be able to be this honest with Knives, knowing that the kinds of things he was going to have to say to his brother in order to be completely honest with him were not going to be easy to hear or for him to say. Vash was at heart a pacifist, it was sort of his natural reaction to avoid confrontations by trying to placate the other, but there were circumstances when trying to placate the person would be counterproductive and this was one of them.

There was a long heavy silence in the room. Vash waited patiently for his brother to speak. They had time. If neccessary Vash could wait hours, weeks, even years. He didn't want to, but it seemed sort of silly that matters between the two of them would be resolved over breakfast. They'd been warring with one another for over a century, matters like that would take a lot more than a few hours to settle.

"You are... right," Knives said, softly into the silence of the opulent chambers. 

Vash blinked. 

Just like that?

"You're right that deep down... I do think I'm somehow better than you. I hadn't realized that until you'd pointed it out. I wasn't treating you like my brother, Vash. I was treating you like some errant child that had somehow lost his way and needed to be corrected by an adult. I'm sorry for that."

It wasn't much, and Knives certainly wasn't admitting that he was wrong about trying to destroy humanity... but it was something, and it was a start.

Vash didn't bother saying something trite and stupid like "Apology accepted" (which might only sting his brother's very touchy sense of pride) instead he showed him, by sending a great happy burst of relief over thier shared twin bond, just like they had when they were younger and plopped down to hug his brother to him. That, more than anything else, seemed to have cleared the air at least a little bit between them.

~Brothers?~ another voice said tentativelyinto the silence. Actually, it wasn't spoken out loud, but in the privacy of their own minds. It was the strange little girl Angel from the previous evening.

-Yes?- Knives inquired properly. Vash could sense her though the link as well, but his brother's reeling background emotions were a dull hum over the shared link.

~Will you be joining me in the baths today? Nursie says it's time and I want to meet you. Everyone meets in the baths, it's the best place for meeting.~

Knives sent an inquiring glance at his brother, who shrugged and said

"That butler said that the House Pisces had a bath reserved for us, I don't see why she can't meet us there."

~Sources and Shapers don't mix,~ the young Angel replied in a tone that said "duh, everybody knows this." To her it was a simple fact of the universe, the same way that the suns rose in the west and water flowed down slope.

-Why is that?- Vash asked curiously.

~Because there's the chance that there might be an accidental Bonding,~ the young one replied. With that simple statement came a wealth of background information, like the fact that she knew that Shapers took power from Sources, and Sources were people with powerful psychic abilities, and used that power to manipulate the molecules of matter in order to keep the city running and its denizens happy and content. She also knew that a Source and a Shaper could never be allowed to meet face to face because it had happened once, and the Source and the Shaper had instantly developed a special Bond between them, one that had melded their two minds into one, and thier specific power frequencies to each other. The Shaper had been rendered ineffective to the purposes of the city because thereafter he could only draw power from his Bondmate. They had literally become two made one, an injury to one was an injury to the other, the death of one was the death of their other, thier hearts and minds forever joined while they lived.

-Wow. Meryl never mentioned that,- Vash remarked.

The young angel sent an inquiry and Vash replied by absentmindedly sending an image of her and a few of his favorite memories of the two of them together; his amusement at fooling her well enough in the beginning of thier aquaintance that she didn't believe that he was the one she'd been looking for, her and her partner saving him from a gang of bandits on a sandsteamer, Vahs ruffling her feathers by pestering her for food and drinking money when she was trying to get some work done, Meryl helping him through the hard day s after Lega--

Vash cut off the memories right at that point; there were certain things that a child shouldn't be exposed to, and he wasn't ready to go into those details with his brother just yet.

-Her mother lives here in Sanctuary,- Vash finished. -She's the head lady at House Pisces.-

There was a long pause for a moment, then the Angel abruptly sent them a burst of surprise.

~You mean you actually know *that* Pisces?!~ 

The surprise was quickly suceeded by a very eagre

~I wanna meet her!~

-Why?- Vash inquired, a little taken aback by the eagre vehemence in her tone. -Is she famous for something?-

The inquiry was quickly answered by a flashing burst of an image inside thier minds, it was a massive building, made all of stone and glass the style reminiscent of the once great castle-fortress of Alhambra, the stones all patterned with repeating byzantine patterns of octagons, squares and diamonds in radials, the interlocking arches holding up a vast and cavernous domed ceiling, several wings spreading out from a central massive dome, each ended with an ornate building with a delicate spire poitning up into the sky. It was exceedingly beautiful just from the outside; and the inside was just as impressive if not more so. The massive inner courtyard held and ornate garden with fountains and stylized statuary leading up to a massive, highly decorated front door of brass inlaid with more byzantine patterns. The opening atruim was a massive colonade with honey-gold marble tiles and arched pillars interlocked to hold up a barrel vault ceiling painted with murals, the marble of the floor was smooth as polished glass and reflected the light that shone through the octahedronal patterned windows lining the walls on either side. A massive dome in the center held a giant globe of pure unscratched, crystal-clear glass, the globe could be used as a giant card catalog, for a person to look up titles of books and authors and subjects. The structure was a giant library, staffed by "magical" self-moving constructs that kept the books in order and kept the place clean and neat. The books were not made of paper or even of plas-paper like the ones on the rest of gunsmoke, but instead had a scrolling screen on one side that the words appeared on, and a hologram-projecting cabochon on the other that showed any pictures it might have.

~She built that!~ the young angel exclaimed. ~it just appeared over night one night, like something out of a fairy-tale. No-one can figure out how she did it, the rumor was that she tried to talk to the council about this new system that she and her father had invented for doing whatever it is that Shapers do, but the council of the families wouldn't hear her without concrete proof that she had a better way... so, she gave it to them. Or so the story goes. She was exiled for misuse of her Shaping abilities and building on public land without a permit from the City Council.~

Vash frowned. Meryl had never mentioned anything about making a massive building overnight, but then again she hadn't mentioned that she was half Renonciate either. Like him, it seemed that she was having difficulties reconciling the two parts of what made up what she was. Vash wasn't entirely human, but he was raised by one, and he sort of thought of himself as one, but there was always a part of him that knew he was other. Knives embraced that fact and was proud of it, believeing that it made him better than any other human on the face of the planet, Vash however... it just made him uncomfortable. He always felt like an outsider. It seemed that he and Meryl had more in common than he'd originally thought.

-Curious,- Knives said. -Very well, we shall meet with you for a bath. I believe my brother would benefit from spending time with others of his own kind.-

~???!~

-Don't mind him,-Vash said in answer to her clear confusion at Knives' attitude. -He's just got a permanent case of the grouchies.-

~^-^~

-Ha ha ha ha! We'll see you soon.- Vash promised. -Just meet us at the same baths that House Pisces frequents.-

~I use the ones for the Sources,~ she said a little uncertainly. ~But I'll ask my nursies if it's okay.~

-We hope to see you there,- Vash said cheerfully, cutting off the link.

"Well, I guess we find that one butler who said he'd lead us there, and go grab a bath," Vash said into the ensuing silence.

"If we must," Knives said with dignity, speaking aloud for the first time that evening. 

Vash was relieved to find the butler standing right outside the door with another servant holding a basket full of bathing supplies waiting for them. The two of them were given long robes of a light silky material, light as cloudstuff but Vash could tell that it was fully strong enough to hold the weight of three of him, in a tuquise blue exactly the shade of his eyes while Knives had one in a paler blue, precisely the shade of his eyes... it seemed that the staff here were in to theme colors. The robes had folded-over cuffs embroidered with circling fish amid stylized wave patterns, the patterns was repeated along the trim on the sides, in a splash along the bottom hem and over the wide sikl sashes they were given to tie them with.

Dressed enough to go to the baths, the two brothers were shown through the house, past the front courtyard with its wrought iron gate and two guardian gargoyles in the front and out to the streets. This would be Vash's first veiw of Forbidden City, the trip they had taken to get there had been by covered rickshaw and he hadn't seen the scenery. His first impression upon stepping out of the gate was that it was every bit as oppulent outside of the house as it had been inside. 

The streets, while not paved with gold, were certainly tiled in intricate patterns of flat stone tiles held seamlessly together that he had never seen anywhere else in gunsmoke. There were slightly raised walks lining either side of the streets, also in colorful patterned tiles that coordinated with the outsides of the walls. In Sanctuary it seemed that nothing was left unadorned or undecorated in some way. The outside walls had faux-arches in bas relief on them, the insides of the arches were painted with stylized scenes of daily life and the great services that the Families did for their people. The stone boxes of palm trees lining the streets and on every street corner to provide shade were carved with intricate patterned interlocking geometrics, the street lamps were of beutifully decorated wrought iron and colored glass, each one a work of art, and every one of them a little different down each street. 

Forbidden city was more than simply walled off Houses, in between each Noble House were sizable public gardens for luxuriating and playing in, some with ponds and pavilions in them, some with faux-ruins and pillars, some with simple topiary hedge mazes, each was different and seemed to set the theme for whatever street it happened to be on. Even in so elevated a neighborhood, the common business of living was still gotten on with, there were open sections of road tiled differently in some places denoting where a market place was held. Even the stalls of the market place were oddly in synch, the carved patterned stalls covered with colored canvas where vendors sold thier wares; wine and fruits, cloth and trinkets, oils and fresh fish and a multitude of other things. Servants in House colors bargained briskly with the vendors while other vendors and criers nearby tried to attract business by shouting that thier wares were the best. 

Even the people of the renonciates were adorned in many different ways. Firstly were thier clothes; they apparently had never met a color they didn't like for they wore many of them, often in layers, or stamped in patterns both on the cloth and as ornaments along the seams. They favored especially bright colors, sunset oranges, pinks, purples, brilliant aqua's and blues and tranquil greens, reds of many shades, golds, saffrons, rarely here and there were softer colors, pastels and duns and browns but mostly used in contrast with brighter colors. They liked brilliant patterns on their clothes, brocades of lions across a firey back ground, stylized clouds over brillinat blues, and more of those interloking geometrics, spirals and tribal-style knotwork designs. Then there was the jewelry; no person went without at least some form of trinket on their person. Even the men wore torques with intricate filligree patterns, pectoral collars across their shoulders and wide belts of gold and jeweled plaques, rings or medallions too. The women wore not only feminine pectoral collars or necklaces as well as bangle-bracelets in abundance, rings and anklets but mingled in among the many layers of their wrap-skirts and dresses they wore long strings of gold bells and bangle coins. All if the jewelry was of an incredibly ornate filligree of sire-thin strands of gold in interlocking knotwork fine as a spiderweb, with jewels encrusting many of the peices. Aside of all this thier bodies themselves were decorated with intricate tattoos of those spiraling knotwork designs, not just on the men but on the women as well. It was certainly a feast for the eyes.

Down that particular street a little past the market place was a collection of large buildings. Unlike the streets of the Noble Houses the buildings on this street were not cut off from the rest of the world by walled courtyards but were instead open and inviting, with open arched porticoes leading into inside courtyards from the sides and the front doors flung wide to visitors. The first building held a large cloth penant sign out front advertizing that it was the Golden Touch Baths, the best bathouse in Shaperside. Knives and Vash exchanged a look, shrugged in unison and followed the servant in Pisces House Colors into the establishment.

The courtyard alone was impressive. The white marble colonade on either side of the open air garden led into an open area with several neatly laid out patches of soft, springy turf or patterned marble squares where people in various states of dress; simple robes or stolas but most owre nothing more than a wrapped kild or loincloth that were excercizing. Some were excersizing alone, doing push ups, sit ups, stretches and running through various movements of some kind of dance-like thing that looked vaguely reminiscent of Tai'Chi or something like it, others ran through a slow pattern of what looked to be part limbering stretch and part martial art in neatly arranged groups. 

Walking down the center aisle and looking at the people in various states of partial dress, Vash noticed that not a one of them had plain skin! Most of them had intricate spiral knotwork tattoos woven in elaborate patterns over thier bodies nd some very few of them, instead of having black ink tattoos had some very strange substance over thier skin... it looked like someone had taken liquid silver and painted it in patterns over thier bodies, it moved and rippled like water over the play of their muscles and Vash couldn't help but stare facinated at it for a minute.

As luck would have it, just emerging from the front of the bath-house on her way out was Meryl... but what a change!

-Vash. Your jaw is hanging open. It is unseemly,- his brother's acidic comment burned snidely in his mind. Vash barely "heard" it. His brain was momentarily off line as he got to see actual flesh that was not hands and face for the first time in their aqquaintence.

Then and there, Vash decided that he liked Renonciate style dress very much, and that coming here to visit had quite possibly been the best thing that had ever happened to him. She was, in a word, stunning.

Renonciate style clothing for the women seemed to consist of a wrapped haltar top and many layers of sheer skirts in varying colors (some embrouidered and some not) wrapped just so around the waist, and a sheer, wide band of silk wrapped round and thrown over one shoulder to hang down the back to knee length. Meryl's dress for the day was indigo, a color in between blue and violet, a silk sash had been wrapped just under her bust at the end of her rib cage then crossed over her breasts and tied around her neck. Her skirts, many differnt coordinating shades that ranged in beween blue and violet, had been wrapped low on her hips and secured with an ornamental belt of silver and amethyst and opal that hung down in a pendant down the front. Her flat toned stomach was bare for the first time ever! The way the silks swayed gracefully when she walked and flirted in the light breeze only accentuated the willowy suppleness of her form. Her abdomen muscles were toned and fit as a dancers, she hid a really great body under than insurance uniform. Perfect hourglass figure. Nice rack too.

"You're here early," she remarked in surprise. Then turned to look at his brother. "This is Knives then?"

"Oh, um, yeah... you two haven't met formally, but Knives this is my insurance girl. Her family's the one letting us stay. meryl, Knives; Knives, Meryl."

Knives for his part, didn't greet her but eyed her frankly and snorted rolling his eyes. Meryl didn't comment or say it was a pleasure, she just inclined her head at both of them. Knives didn't have to make any reply and it appeared they were both satisfied with the situation.

"My mother has the day booked for me," Meryl said with an apologetic smile at them. "I may join you for dinner, but more than likely not so don't hold it for me. Wish me luck."

"Why would you need luck?" Vash asked curiously. 

"Over half of the people I'm going to visit today don't like me for one reason or another. In the words of Bernard Shaw, we shall speak of two topics, the weather and everyone's health."

"Can't say much about the weather," vash remarked. "It's hot, and it's dry; that's about it."

Meryl grinned at the quip and Vash thought the little dimple that appeared at the lower right corner of her mouth was cute.

"Enjoy the baths, it's said to be quite the unsettling experience for most Outlanders."

With a final wave Meryl sailed on past him and vash caught the scent of something sweetly spicy flirting on the breeze in her wake that did funny things to him. She was wearing a new scent and damn did it ever smell good!

-Are you quite finished? Your tongue is hanging out... is that drool?-

So nice how he could always count on his brother's acidic wit to point out when he was making a general ass of himself. Without any other delays they entered the building proper.

"Wow."

That was all Vash could think upon entering the building itself. The opening was an arched colonade leading straight back to a long mirror-pond with decorative lilies in it. The ceiling was artfully painted with frescoes of life in Shaper side and the pillars were decorated at the tops with weeds. the polished floors were white marble and gleamed glassy in the light let in through the windowed arches along the sides. Vash followed the servant to an elaborate brass door on one side and was shown to a room where a bunch of men and women were being undressed by the staff of the bathhouse, casually indifferent to nudity between the sexes, and given linen kilts (with simple breat bands for the women). Vash observed that many of them went out the side door and into a courtyard for excersize, jogging, wrestling, weight-lifting and a very vigour dance-like regiment with two sticks. Those coming in from the courtyards were stripped completely naken and scrubbed down by servants, either thier own or bathouse attendants, then they proceeded in the same direction Vash and his brother were being led in.

Vash and Knives were passed through what had to be the main chamber of the baths. it was dominated by an immense steaming pool with white marble steps leading down in one side, the other sides of the bath had built-in tiled seating carved niche-like along the sides of the pool. The pool itself was tiled in a great mosaic pattern on the bottom with what looked like twelve interwoven stylized depictions of the twelve signs of the western zodiac from old earth. Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces all in a ring of inter woven spiral knot work with a funny symbol that loooked linda like a tree inside a circle in the middle. 

Knots of naked men and women lounged about casually chatting with another, some talked of the latest inter-house Alliance, others talked of their family members, still others discussed the latest fashions, or discussed people who weren't present. Around the three other main sides of the pool were smaller pools with smaller groups of people in them, also discussing the affairs of the day. None of them seemed to find anything amiss with being utterly naked in one another's company.

"That pool over there is the cold-pool," their escort pointed out. "It's for invigorating the skin prior to a good pore-opening soak. The other pools in the main pool room have varying degrees of heat in them, the largest is merely warm and the smaller pools get gradually hotter from right to left. Most start with the cold and then work their way up, it's also the best way to make the gossip rounds."

Vash couldn't do anything but nod politely and exchange a long look with his brother.

"Your bath is through this door, you are of course free to invite anyone you care to to join you," the servant said politely as he led the two of them through a tiled doorway of blue with silver fish inlaid on it. 

Waiting on a bench beside the door was a little girl with pale blonde hair and sky-blue eyes and an entire flock of nurses in brightly colored sarongs and three gurardsmen in black and silver tabards with twin blade strapped to thier backs, looking very menacing in the background.

"There you are!" the little girl said, perking up brightly upon seeing them. "I've been waiting here for ages!"

It appeared that to any child, no matter the species, any significant amount of time was an age. Vash smiled cheerfully and waved. A thought then struck him. He was not only going to be bathing naked in the presence of strangers, but there would be strange women there, attractive ones, as well as men, and worse, a child as well. Maybe he was being provincial, but bathing with a small child just seemed...

"What's wrong?" the girl asked when she noted his hestiation. "Would you rather bathe out here with everyone else? Or did you want to eat some food first?"

"Isn't there a kiddie pool or something?" he asked hesitantly.

"Well, yeah, but I'm too mature to bathe with those babies," the little angel said in the tones of a proud scornful child who felt she was more than old enough to be taken as an adult.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans," he muttered reluctantly, deciding that he was going to wear the bathing robe into the bath.

"And you call me a prude," Knives said stripping down and allowing the servants to attend him. One thing to be said about Knives, he knew what to do with a servant.

"So..." Vash started, after they had climbed into the private bath for House Pisces. The nursies surrounded thier young charge, scrubbing her with soap and sponges and putting conditioning rinses in her hair and flower essences on her skin.   
"How did you come to be here?" Knives asked, ignoring the offers from some of the younger nursies to do the same favors for him. He wasn't interested in being handled by spiders.

Shaela looked at him like he'd lost his mind.

"I was born here, of course," she replied with a "duh!" sort of tone.

Vash and Knives exchanged a long, puzzled look. Everything Meryl had told them about the Renonciates said that they didn't rely on lost technology to survive and that they had found a way to live thier lives in peace without relying on plant bulbs to get by... so then how was another freeborn plant angel born there among them? They didn't see a bulb anywhere nor did they sense and angel's presence.

"How?" Knives asked curiously. Shaela gave him an odd look.

"You're both fully grown adults, don't you already know about that sort of thing? Well if you really want me to explain..." she shrugged. "When a man and a woman love each other very much, they--"

"Ahg! No,no, no!" Vash protested waving his hands wildly. The nearby nursies attending to thier young charge's bathing giggled behind thier hands. 

"Look we already have a pretty good idea of the mechanics of it," Vash continued. "We learned that much on the ship anyway."

"What we want to know is how you were born here," Knives clarified. "Neither I nor my brother can sense another plant in the city nor even the energy signature of one which leaves how you were born here something of a mystery."

"Oh!" Shaela brightened in understanding. 

"My mommy lived in a magic crystal ball out in the desert," she began as one recounting a tale that they knew by heart. "She had no-one to keep her company and no-one to take care of so she was very lonely. She lived all alone for a very long time until one day daddy heard her singing way out in the desert and she knew that the one she had been waiting for had been born. Daddy didn't know what the voice in his dreams was, he thought it was just a normal part of being a noble son of the house Sagitarius, but as he got older she began to try to call him to her. Daddy didn't know what to do; his family duty lay in one direction but he knew that his destiny lay in another. Finally he asked the help of the only outlander he knew of, the daughter of the First house of Pisces, Sola'ha Meryl, to sneak him out of the city so he could find the one he'd dreamed of for all of his life. Waaay out in the desert he finally found mommy's magical crystal ball and broke it open. They were Bonded instantly and together Mommy and Daddy created Shangri-la. And they lived happily ever after. The end."

There was a long moment of silence while Vash and Knives digested this. vash was the first to speak.

"Bonded?" he asked curiously.

"That's when a Source, like mommy, ties their power to a Shaper, like Daddy," the child explained patiently, sounding only slightly aggrieved at having to explain what to her were elemental truths to a couple of strange outlander plant boys.

"A source can supply lots and lots of power," she went on. "But can't really actually do anything with it. A shaper has all the ability to channel energy, but can't supply it himself. Separate, they make do as best they can, but when you put them together they can create miracles. Daddy made an entire forest and citadel appear on a mountaintop in under a week once. Oh... and when a Source and a Shaper Bond-off it protects them from... stuff."

She handed Vash a teacup and Knives a floating little dolphin toy to play with.

"What kind of stuff?" Vash pursued.

"No-one can hurt them because they can heal each other," Shaela said as if reciting tediously from memory. "And no-one can make take away their power, or force them to do anything. Thier Bond ensures that thier powers are always in synch with only each other. Oh... and Bonded pairs are the only ones that can have kids. That's how I got here, by the way."

"So... then... where are your parents?" Vash asked curiously. It would be sad if ths little miracle had been born into this world even more alone than he and Knives were.

"They're out on Sojourn right now," she replied, shrugging. "They're working on something very special so they spend a lot of time outside of Sanctuary."

There was a whistful longing note in her voice when she said this.

"they said when I get older and find a bondmate of my own, I'd get to come with them," she added a moment later and started playing with her little toy tea-set in the water. "It's too dangerous, they said, for me to be outside the city walls without a bondmate to protect me from people who might try to use me for their owns ends."

"Oh," Vash said, not certain what to say to that.

"So who are you two bonded off to?" she asked next, looking expectantly at th two of them. "Are you going to live here in the city with me?"

"We only have each other, but we're twins, so I guess that counts... sort of."

Knives shot his brother a look for the sort of comment and interjected smoothly

"of course it counts, we have no need of some lower life-form to enable us to use our powers."

"Speak for yourself," vash muttered. knives ignored him and the angel child looked confused.

"You didn't come here to find bondmates?" she asked confusedly. "And what do you mean by lower life-form? That's my future bondmate you're talking about."

The rising edge in her voice and look she gave to knives, that of a younger sibling chiding thier older sibling when they were impossibly dense and had gotten things turned around in wierd ways, said he was dangerously close to offending her. Vash quickly interceded.

"That's just Knives' way of showing affection," vash said quickly. "He has a hard time getting to know people."

"Huh," the younger child said, lookiing sharply at the two of them, unconvinced. Vash was quickly reminded of how sharp he and Knives both had been at her age, already solving equations that had baffled the lead scientist on board their ship and picking up on the complex emotional interplay between all of the members of their small skeleton crew on board the flagship of the seeds ship. 

"Well he'd better watch what he says, these are my people and one of them is going to be my bondmate for forever and ever someday."

Knives and Vash exchanged a long speaking look. Vash had spent more time among humans, especially young children, over the years than Knives ever had, and he recognized the look that most young girls got when faced with the discussion of their eventual prince charmings and the far off future ideals of the ones they would marry and spend the nebulous years of their future lives playing one long, fun extended version of "house" with. If Knives knew what was good for him he'd leave well enough alone.

"We're going to have our own magical castle a thousand times better than all the houses in Forbidden City Put together and it'll be all our own. We'll have feasts every day with honey-cakes and sugar-fruits and I'll have lots and lots of pretty dresses and chests and chests of jewelry. He'll make the best city ever, even better than Sanctuary, a hundred times bigger and better and no-one will ever be sad or want anything. And I'll be paraded through the streets with processions of tumblers and fireworks and dancers and all sorts of music, feasting and dancing and celebration. Everyone will love us, we'll be like a king and queen from out of a storybook." 

All of this was said with a small childs faith that everything they said was exactly what would come to pass. She said it so earnestly. vash just smiled and agreed with her. 

"Hey," she said next taking a long look at them both. "What happened to you two anyway? You've got an entire section of your chest missing."

he thought wryly to himself. Young people were great and he loved them, but they usually weren't long on tact. He knew perfectly well that the little missy here was already smart enough to know better, but it seemed she liked to use her indulged status as a youngster to ask questions that she certainly wouldn't have gotten away with if people realized how old she was in her mind.

"Um well..." Vash temporized. He really didn't want to answer her question.

"Why don't you get a bondmate? She could heal that right up for you," Shaela asked, hard on the heels of her first inquiry. Vash was brough up short by her casual observation of the function of one of those supposed bondmates. 

"I'm sure one of the daughters of one of the Shaper families would be willing to put her duty aside and bond off with you, but you'd probably have to give some serious bribes to make them give up thier concubines. Sola Kolinyari of the Third House of Pisces has a string of over twenty concubines they say, of course she's only Third House and you want top rank if you can get it..." and she seemed prepared to go into a long discussion of the inter-house politics and the merits of the daughters of each house as opposed to another.

"Ah..." Vash said clearly out of his depth.

"Okay, enough bath time, let's go play," she said, with a small child usual need to be out and doing things she should probably best stay out of.

Her nursies obligingly got her up out of the soaking tub and wrapped her up in enormous fluffy towels and took her off to a room for dressing. Vash and Knives were led off by the same servant who had led them to the baths and taken to a small antechamber where they would be dressed in the style of the renonciates. Afeter all there were only so many ways you could put on a pair of pants and a shirt after all, and he'd rather not have the butler gawking at the scars that criscrossed his body.

"What do you think so far Knives?" Vash asked as they dressed. 

"It's very... different," he temporized. "Instead of preying on our kin, they prey upon thier own kind."

:I should have known he'd see things that way,: Vash thought, a little irritated that his brother always found the worst possible interperetation of things. His observations were true in a sense, but they just weren't all of the truth.

"Where to next?" Vash asked Shaela when they emerged from the changing room. "We just got here recently, so we don't know our way around. How about you show us around the city?"

"I only know the Forbidden City where the Sources live, and a little bit of the Shapers Forbidden City," Shaela replied easily. "I wen there with my daddy a few times to call on the Families. That's even more than most Sources have seen, unless they were brought in."

"I don't follow you," Vash said. Shaela sighed again, sounding aggrieved and explained.

"Most Sources are born in the Forbidden City of the Sources, where people breed in family bloodlines to produce higher and higher level Sources, but sometimes a Source just pops up from an Commons bloodline unexpectedly. They could be living most of their lives as a regular common out in the city when suddenly they manifest the talent. Usually they present themselves to the gate to be tested and brought into a life of luxury there in forbidden city, but sometimes they have to be... persuaded."

Knives shot Vash an 'I told you so' look and pressed for details.

"My friend Azira was born among the Commons to a familiy of indigo dyers, nothing special about her until she manifested the ability to hear other people's thoughts. At first she was really scared to leave her family but once she got to forbidden city and her trainer started her on lessons and she made some friends she was fine. We play sometimes. Her family visits her, but she tells me that sometimes she doesn't really know what to say to them. The headman is talking about contracting her with one of the boys from the Aikotari line, and that's not a bad bloodline, they have moderate power, but I think she can do better. There's this boy from the Telki Bloodline that's been making eyes at her. People say he's a playboy but I dunno, a bloodlines a blodline. Forbidden city would pay for their child to be raised if it's a Source anyway."

Vash ignored the talk about bloodlines and matches in favor of assimilating the information. Meryl hadn't been joking when she'd said that life among the Renonciates was different. Shaela went on.

"Most Sources who were born there only see outsdie the walls of Forbidden City during the Processions."

"Ah," said Vash. "Have any of them ever wanted to go home?"

"Sometimes when the littles are brought in from outside I heard that they cry for their families for a week or so, usually they get put in with an already stable contracted family in the city and adjust from there."

"Do their parents get to see them again?" Vash asked next.

"If they want to, they can visit whenever, sometimes it hapens that way, sometimes it doesn't." Shaela shrugged. "We all do our part for the sake of the city and for the people. Sources and their families know this. it's part of life here."

"What's life like for people who aren't Shapers or Sources, who live outside the forbidden cities?"

"I dunno," she shrugged indicating that she hadn't thought of it one way or another.

"Wanna go out and take a look?" Vash asked.

"It's almost time for my nap," Shaela rep;ied, her tone indicating that she wasn't interested.

"Oh, okay then. You go on home with your nursies and Knives and I will look around."

Sometimes small children responded to reverse psychology, especially if it seemed like they were being excluded from something really neat. Not so with Shaela though.

"Bye bye! See ya tomorrow," she said, wandering off with a small crowd of her nurses in tow.

Knives and Vash shrugged at each other.

"that's strange," Vash remarked. "I've never seen such an incurious child before. Remembre what you and I were like at that age?"

"Couldn't keep us out of anyplace," Knives agreed. "Rem and Conrad used to say they were going to put bell collars on us like a cat."

Vash smiled a little to himself. Knives sounded almost fond right then.


End file.
